


Celestial University

by freyjawriter24



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, He/Him Pronouns For Aziraphale (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Crowley (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Gabriel (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Hastur, He/Him Pronouns For Ligur (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Sandalphon, M/M, She/Her Pronouns for Dagon (Good Omens), She/Her Pronouns for Michael (Good Omens), Slow Burn, They/Them Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), they/them pronouns for uriel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24569698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freyjawriter24/pseuds/freyjawriter24
Summary: Crowley was regretting every life choice that had led him here. Aziraphale, meanwhile, was loving every minute.This is the Human AU in which I drop all our show favourites into university and see how they fare. Written for the Good AUmens AU Fest.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 112
Kudos: 61
Collections: Good AUmens AU Fest





	1. Welcome to the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my monster-length fic for the Good Aumens AU Fest, based on the prompt 'university students'. It is largely based on my own experiences of being at a UK university, but some of the societies/events/subjects mentioned I was never part of, so all errors in that respect are mine.
> 
> Things you should be aware of before reading this fic:
> 
>   * Warning you now for body shaming content, mostly in the form of Gabriel being a dick to Aziraphale about food, possibly also of the internalised variety. I will warn for this in the chapter notes as and when it occurs. From Crowley's POV, there will only ever be positive things to say about Aziraphale's body.
>   * There will be discussion of sexuality and also possibly gender, but I promise there will be no bigotry in this respect exhibited by any of the main characters. There will, however, be some internalised issues, which I will warn for in the chapter notes as and when it comes up.
>   * T rating is for swearing, references to sex, and alcohol use. Please keep an eye on the tags, as they will change as I add to the fic. I will try and warn before each chapter for anything relevant, but do feel free to shoot me a message [on tumblr](https://freyjawriter24.tumblr.com/) if you think I've missed anything major out.
>   * This is a _very_ slow burn.
> 

> 
> I don't usually give myself update schedules for various reasons, but for this fic (for the month of June ONLY) I will be updating once a week every weekend. From July onwards, the chapters will come as and when they are finished. But I can guarantee _at least_ 16k words before the month is out.  
> Also be aware that this is going to be a long one. And I mean _long_. You'll have to bear with me a bit, but rest assured I have a very thorough outline and we will get there eventually...
> 
> Thank you so much to [lordvoldemortsnipple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordvoldemortsnipple/pseuds/lordvoldemortsnipple) for my amazing banner! (and also to [yamisnuffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yamisnuffles/pseuds/yamisnuffles) for the hilarious photoshop on [my preview post](https://freyjawriter24.tumblr.com/post/618673743886188544/go-events-freyjawriter24-introducing)!) I really appreciate how welcoming and supportive everyone on the GO Events server has been, and these creations are just further proof of that. I love you all, and I can't wait to see what you produce with your AUs too!
> 
> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter’s title is a lyric from [‘The Horror and The Wild’](https://genius.com/The-amazing-devil-the-horror-and-the-wild-lyrics) by _The Amazing Devil_. Aside from having a very apt band name, I have pretty much been listening to this group on loop while writing this fic, for which I entirely blame [blacknbluengray](https://blacknbluengray.tumblr.com/) on tumblr (jk, genuinely thank you, I love this music so much). A fair few chapter titles for this fic will be their lyrics.

* * *

Crowley was, for perhaps the first time in his entire existence, completely and utterly alone.

He really didn’t know how to feel about that. Of course, he had technically _chosen_ this. He’d been to all the talks, the discussions, the presentations. He’d hung out with _that_ kind of people. He’d asked questions. And then, eventually, somehow, it had happened. All too quickly and without a single chance to backtrack or escape.

He couldn’t even really say he’d _fallen_ into it, either. He hadn’t – he’d gone along with it, under his own steam, asking the aforementioned questions and making choices about where to go with all this – but at the same time, that all felt like a dream now, like it wasn’t really real, like he hadn’t really done those things. He hadn’t known what he was signing up for, not really. He’d just sauntered from one thing to another, as he always did, and now he’d ended up here. In Hell.

Okay, that was probably a bit harsh. It was only the first night, after all, and it wasn’t like he’d even had any actively-bad experiences yet. He was just feeling lonely and homesick, that was all.

Crowley groaned and rolled over in his new, too-small single bed. He stared up through the dark at the ceiling, listening for any sign of life around him.

Nothing.

There were other people here, he knew. He’d seen them, earlier today, dragging suitcases and duvets out of cars and up stairs. But none of them were in his flat. None of them had even acknowledged him, each being caught up in their own problems, their own ‘did I forget that?’ and ‘where’s this?’ and ‘Mum, stop it, it’s fine!’.

There were at least ten other people in this building, possibly double or even nearly triple that, and Crowley didn’t know who a single one of them was, or even how to go about introducing himself to them. He was just lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wishing he was pretty much anywhere else.

He wondered vaguely whether all those other people were similarly staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, pondering what kind of Hell they’d got themselves into, or whether he was the only one still restless at half one in the morning, while everyone around him slept peacefully, dreaming happy thoughts about what would happen tomorrow.

Crowley groaned and rolled over again. Things would look better in the morning, he told himself. They always did.

* * *

Despite a late night and minimal sleep, somehow he woke up at an annoyingly reasonable time. His phone, left on the floor because there was no bedside table included in the furniture of these student rooms, told him it was just gone nine. He groaned, then realised that was becoming a habit and told himself to stop.

He laid there for another half an hour, listening to see if anyone else was up and about yet. There were some slight sounds somewhere that suggested that at least one or two people were awake, but there were no cars making noise in the carpark to tell him that anyone else was moving in. There were birds outside, though, singing in a nearby tree, and Crowley tried to focus on that as a positive sign [1] of what was to come.

Eventually, he rolled out of bed. “May as well grab some breakfast,” he said aloud to the lonely-looking cactus sat on the corner of his desk. It didn’t have anything to say to that.

He headed out of his bedroom and into the gloomy corridor of the flat in search of some food. The flat’s layout was fairly linear – four doors to bedrooms along one wall, two bathrooms and a bedroom against the other, and a final door to the kitchen at the end. That did mean, however, that there were precisely zero windows onto the interior corridor, giving a dingy, unwelcoming look to the flat despite the bright Sunday morning outside.

Crowley made his way towards the kitchen door, whose sliver of glass allowed in enough daylight to see the route by. That window also gave him plenty of warning, which his half-asleep brain didn’t recognise until it was too late, of the level of sunlight in the room beyond.

“Ow! Shit,” he muttered as he pushed the door open and his eyes reacted to the sudden change in light levels. “Bloody sun.”

He was too tired and lazy to bother going back to his room for the sunglasses that had been so casually discarded on the floor next to his phone last night, and instead he held a hand up to shade his eyes as he puttered around the kitchen-living area, searching for a bowl and some cereal.

The benefits to this kind of living, at least, were obvious. He might not be having any meals cooked _for_ him, like he was used to, but at the very least he could eat what and whenever he liked. For the time being he’d been left with the basic essentials – cereal, milk, pasta, rice, bread, and a few other small things – but now that he was in control of food arrangements, anything was possible. He had a feeling his portion of the freezer was more likely to get any use than his shelf in the fridge.

Bowl located, and cereal and milk added to it, Crowley grabbed a spoon from the cutlery drawer and left the hostile brightness of the kitchen behind, dragging himself back down the corridor towards the safety of his dimly-lit bedroom.

Apparently, though, this Hellscape had other plans.

The front door to the flat burst open, and a massive, largely undefined but presumably humanoid figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. Crowley jumped out of his skin.

“Oh,” the newcomer said. “Thought I’d be the first one here.”

“Uh, no,” Crowley said awkwardly, using his free hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the daylight again. “I came yesterday. You’re second, though.”

“Fair.” The silhouette stood in the doorway, making some sort of complicated motion hidden by the fact that they were, from Crowley’s point of view, in shadow. Then, suddenly, half their body seemed to shift off and sideways, and proceeded to be dumped just inside the doorway of the flat.

Crowley blinked, then rubbed his eyes. “Huh.”

The giant figure was distinctly less so now that they’d taken off the frankly enormous rucksack they’d been wearing. What remained of the silhouette in the doorway vanished for a second around the corner, then reappeared again dragging a large suitcase.

“Mind if I switch a light on?” the newcomer said, then didn’t wait for an answer, flicking a switch and kicking the door shut behind them at the same time.

Thankfully, the yellow light from the bulbs in the ceiling was far less intense than what was coming in from outside. And now that the stranger wasn’t stood against a backdrop too bright to see their face, Crowley could actually tell who and what he was looking at.

The stranger was short, was Crowley’s first impression. Short, oddly dressed, and almost entirely covered in black. They were wearing a massive coat that looked far too thick for the end-of-summer weather, plus a peculiar and shapeless fluffy hat, both of which were offset by a pair of loose three-quarter-length trousers, some heavy-duty boots, and what looked like fishnet socks.

“Name’s Beelzebub,” the stranger said gruffly. “It’s long and unwieldy, but I like it. Don’t take the piss. I’ll also accept Beelz or Beez. Fuck off with anything else.” They grunted, then said, slightly quieter, “and it’s they/them.”

Crowley stood there for a second, not entirely sure how to react. Eventually, he realised Beez was waiting for his name in return. “Uh, hi,” he stuttered out. “I’m Crowley. Well, Anthony, technically, but I prefer Crowley. And, uh... he/him, I guess.”

“Cool,” Beez said shortly. “Which one’s yours, then?”

Crowley indicated his room by motioning with the cereal bowl. “Those two are bathrooms,” he said, gesturing in the other direction, “and the one at the end with the window in it is the kitchen/living room area.”

“Nice.” Beez moved to pick up their bags again. “Mine’s the one down the end,” they said, moving forward towards the kitchen, and Crowley quickly moved out of their way. “I’m going shopping once I’ve sorted everything out, but then I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

“Um, okay,” Crowley said, still slightly dazed.

He watched Beez unlock their bedroom door, shove their rucksack in ahead of them, drag their suitcase afterwards, and then slam the door shut. The lock clicked, and Crowley let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

It wasn’t until he got back into his own room that he realised he’d just met his first flatmate whilst wearing a t-shirt with a unicorn on it and a very small pair of pyjama shorts.

* * *

It was another couple of hours before things started getting noisy and busy again outside. Both Saturday and Sunday were moving in days, and it seemed like about half of the student body had chosen each day, so there was just as much chaos as yesterday, except today also featured everyone who had arrived already weaving around the newcomers and their parents, everyone lugging heavy bags and boxes into flats.

There were five bedrooms in each flat, and Crowley wedged his bedroom door open to say hi to each of his three other flatmates as they arrived.

Hastur came first, a tall, blond-haired, dirty-looking guy with dark eyes and a vacant expression. He was in the room next to Crowley.

Dagon was next, a slimy-looking woman who seemed to wink creepily at everyone and had a distracting habit of occasionally licking her teeth. She took the room opposite, between the two bathrooms.

The final room, between Hastur and Beelzebub, was filled mid-afternoon by Ligur, a guy who seemed slightly more normal compared to the other occupants of the flat, other than the fact that his eyes were a piercing, almost unreal shade of green.

Crowley had headed into the kitchen for a snack – this time with his sunglasses firmly on – when the whole flat was finally together for the first time.

“Oi, lanky boy. Crawley.” Dagon called from the sofa.

“Crowley,” he corrected without thinking.

“ _Crow_ -ley,” Dagon drawled. “What do you reckon about a party tonight? Celebrate our newfound freedom?”

Crowley’s hand hovered in his cupboard, midway through choosing between an apple and a biscuit. He considered the question posed.

On the one hand, a party sounded potentially fun, and definitely a good way to meet people. On the other hand, a party also sounded possibly horrific, would almost certainly involve large quantities of alcohol, and uni was due to start tomorrow. Then again, if he said no, everyone here would probably hate him, and he definitely did _not_ want to get off on the wrong foot with his flatmates. Besides, he could always just have one or two drinks and then stick with water for the rest of the night.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, grabbing both the apple and the biscuit and turning to face the others. “When were you thinking?”

“Dunno. After dinner, whenever people can be bothered to show up,” Ligur said.

“We’re gonna go round banging on people’s doors to see if they want to join, in a bit,” Beez said.

“Sounds good,” Crowley said. He bit down into the apple, then pushed the mouthful into his cheek. “I don’t have anything to drink with me at the moment, so I’ll probably head to the shops. Anyone want anything?”

“Nah, I’m stocked up,” said Dagon, with a wink. Crowley didn’t even try to figure that one out.

“Me too,” Ligur said.

“I grabbed some earlier,” said Beez.

Crowley paused for a second, looking at Hastur. He wasn’t entirely convinced that the blond guy had even been following the conversation.

Ligur nudged him. “Oi, Hastur. You with us, mate?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Got some vodka somewhere.”

“Cool,” Crowley said with a shrug. He swung the cupboard door shut behind him and headed for the kitchen door. “I’ll see you guys in a bit, then.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his new flatmates. Well, it kind of _was_ , but he _had_ only just met them. Either way, once he’d finished eating, grabbed his keys and money and made sure he had his ID on him, he made sure to lock his bedroom door behind him. Just in case.

He was a little lost in thought about the party as he left the flat, which was probably why he almost walked smack into someone on the landing.

“Oh!” the person said, stepping back to give Crowley room.

“Careful!” he said reflexively, and without thinking reached out to grab the stranger’s arm and yank them away from the stairs they’d just almost fallen down.

“Oh! Thank you!”

A pink, bespectacled face peered at Crowley from over a large pile of books. [2]

“Sorry about that. Thanks.”

“Nah, my fault,” Crowley said quickly. “Wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Still,” the stranger said. “Thank you.”

Crowley shrugged. Then he realised this was exactly the sort of situation that should probably call for an exchange of names. He was meant to be meeting people here, after all.

“I’m Crowley, by the way. Anthony J. Crowley.” He kicked himself internally for the James Bond-like introduction, but it was too late to back out now.

The stranger’s face broke into a beaming smile. “Aziraphale,” he said, shifting the pile of books in his arms to offer a hand to shake. Crowley tried not to smile at the formality, and took it.

 _Soft_ , he noted involuntarily.

“Azira Fell?” he asked. “Is that one name or two?”

“Oh,” the soft stranger said, blushing. “Just the one. It’s Aziraphale Princip.”

“Princip? What’s that, French?”

“Ah, I think it’s Serbian, originally. But I did have family in France at one point. There’s a distant relative that got locked up in the Bastille.”

Crowley laughed, and Aziraphale somehow managed to go even pinker.

“Sorry, you don’t need my whole life story,” he said in a rush, looking away. “Nice to meet you, Crowley.” He turned to go, heading for the flat across the landing from Crowley’s.

“Hey,” Crowley said suddenly, before he could think better of it.

Aziraphale turned back. Crowley looked at him properly – armful of books, long-sleeved cream knitted jumper, vaguely-smart trousers that definitely weren’t jeans. Glasses. Pale blue, earnest eyes behind them. Short, fluffy-looking white-blond hair. Soft hands. Probably an angel, in the sense that Crowley’s mates back home always meant it. [3] The kind of person that definitely wouldn’t be interested in a party.

“Uh, my flatmates and I are having a few drinks at ours tonight,” Crowley said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at his own front door. “If you wanted to come over and hang out for a bit. Might be a good way to meet whoever else is living here.”

For a second, Crowley thought Aziraphale was going to say no, and it looked more out of habit than anything else. There was a pause. Then his face broke into that outrageously bright grin again.

“That sounds lovely,” Aziraphale said. “Yes, of course. What time?”

“Oh, uh, I don’t think we’ve got a strict time yet. Just at some point this evening. After dinner. Maybe aim for eight-ish? I don’t really know, but you’ll probably be able to tell by when other people start to arrive.” Crowley could feel himself beginning to ramble, and forced himself to stop talking.

“Okay, wonderful. I’m looking forward to it.”

Crowley couldn’t help but smile back. “See you then,” he said, then shuffled to the stairs and went down them, definitely _not_ looking back up as he did so to watch Aziraphale go into his flat.

 _He seems nice,_ Crowley thought as he walked around the corner to the local Lidl. _Bit studious, maybe, but we are at uni. Seems a Hell of a lot better than the group I’m living with, at any rate._

It took him an entire shopping trip – including several bottles of alcohol, lots of frozen chips and pizzas, a stockpile of chocolate biscuits, and some jam – plus the journey back, laden with bags, _plus_ seeing and awkwardly waving to Aziraphale as he was grabbing the last few things out of a car outside, _plus_ putting all his shopping away in the kitchen and his bedroom, for Crowley to realise that he was still thinking about that moment on the landing.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said aloud, throwing himself on the bed and barely restraining himself from screaming into a pillow. “Seriously? Already? I’ve been here _two bloody minutes_...”

Aziraphale, it seemed, was going to make this first year of uni a whole lot more interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Perhaps one might even say, a good omen... [return to text]
> 
> 2 ‘Bespectacled’ wasn’t a word Crowley often thought to use, given that it rather gave the sense of someone old and doddery, like some ancient fussy librarian, but here it most certainly applied. The stranger had to be about the same age as Crowley himself, but his general aesthetic gave him the air of someone just waiting for the moment he could settle down among towers of messily-stacked ancient books and never leave again. [return to text]
> 
> 3 ‘Angel’, according to Luke and the others, meant ‘a person who does not smoke, drinks rarely if at all, and has not nor would ever even consider doing drugs’. Crowley did not smoke or do drugs, but the word ‘angel’ was meant in a derogatory fashion, so he willingly went along with the drinking part so as to seem cool. To Luke especially. A couple of years on, and he still wasn’t sure it had ever worked. [return to text]


	2. Hazy Crazy Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter’s title comes from a line in ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’: “To those hazy crazy nights we met”. I thought that was fairly appropriate for a party setting...
> 
> Warning in this chapter for alcohol use and mention of vomit.

University seemed to be getting off to a good start, Aziraphale thought happily. He had a room of his own, everything was in its place, he had his first-week timetable printed out and ready to go for tomorrow, and he’d even been invited over for a social gathering already. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Now he just needed to meet his flatmates.

One of them, Michael, had already been around when he’d been unloading his food and kitchen supplies in the communal living space earlier, but she hadn’t really said much other than her name, and she’d promptly vanished into her room to escape the chaos that was someone moving in. Now that that was all over and done with, Aziraphale decided to venture to the kitchen for a cup of tea, and hope he’d bump into a few of the others.

The kitchen door was open, and inside there was a tall guy in pale grey and lilac running gear, doing stretches.

“Hello!” he boomed in an American accent, striding over to Aziraphale to clap him on the shoulder. “I’m Gabriel. You must be our new recruit!”

Aziraphale wasn’t sure what to say to that, but he gave his name in return.

“Nice to meet you, Aziraphale. I was just about to go for an afternoon jog, but I’m sure Uriel here could help show you around.” He gestured behind him at the sofas, one of which was occupied by a smartly-dressed student holding a large textbook. “Right then, bye!”

Gabriel took off out of the kitchen, already jogging, swinging the door shut behind him. Aziraphale, reeling slightly in his wake, shook himself and walked over to the sofa.

“Ah, hello. Uriel, is it? I’m Aziraphale.”

“Hi,” Uriel said shortly, not looking up from the book.

Aziraphale stood there for a moment, feeling more and more awkward. “I, ah... I don’t mean to interrupt, but Gabriel said you might show me around. Is there anything I should know?”

Uriel sighed, then lowered the book to their lap, closing it with a finger in the page to keep their place. Aziraphale flicked his eyes down for a moment to read the cover – _The History and Politics of Magna Carta_.

“Bathroom 1, nearest the front door, is for Rooms 1 and 2, which are Michael and me. Bathroom 2, nearest here, is for Rooms 4 and 5, which are Gabriel and Sandalphon. You’re Room 3, between the two bathrooms, so you can choose. But please stick to your choice, and only use the other bathroom when absolutely necessary.”

“Okay...” Aziraphale started, but Uriel cut him off.

“No parties without the full approval of everyone in the flat. No guests in the common area without prior approval, but they can hang out in your room whenever you like, as long as you do not make any noise after 9pm and you continue to obey accommodation policy on guests staying the night. Guests use your bathroom, and you are responsible for clearing up after them in all communal areas.”

“Right.”

“No loud music after 9pm. Keep to your shelves in the fridge and freezer. If you ever leave anything in there and it goes off, anyone reserves the right to throw it away, including the container that it’s in. Label your milk, and do not take anyone else’s stuff without permission. Washing up should be done as soon as possible, and the drying rack cleared within a reasonable amount of time. No one else will clear up after you, but we will let you know if you’re taking up too much room with your dirty or drying plates.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, when there was a long enough gap for him to speak. “Anything else?”

“Our phone numbers and pronouns are on the fridge. We have a WhatsApp group for emergencies. Gabriel will add you.”

“Okay, great.” Aziraphale decided not to say that he didn’t have WhatsApp, and had never even heard of it until just now. He’d look it up later.  
He gave a nervous smile and gestured to the book in Uriel’s lap. “So, ah, are you a History student, then?”

“What gave it away?” came the flat response.

“I’m doing English,” Aziraphale said brightly, though his enthusiasm was beginning to flag a little in the face of Uriel’s deadpan brusqueness.

“Good for you.”

Aziraphale nodded, his hands fluttering a little at each other in front of him. Then he decided the conversation was probably a lost cause, and headed over to add his own number to the fridge and copy down everyone else’s.

Just as he was inputting the last new contact into his phone, the kitchen door opened again, and an as-yet-unmet flatmate came into the room.

“Oh, hello,” Aziraphale said, turning round with a smile. “You must be Sandalphon. I’m Aziraphale, in, ah, Room 3.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sandalphon said, his voice a long, slow drawl that made the words sound like they meant exactly the opposite. The hairs on the back of Aziraphale’s neck stood up in uncomfortable protest.

“Uriel,” the newcomer said from the kitchen doorway. “Have you told him the _rules_ yet?”

“Yes,” Uriel said curtly. _Well, at least they’re just as standoffish to everyone,_ Aziraphale thought, somewhat relieved.

“Good,” Sandalphon said. He turned a toothy grin on Aziraphale, which honestly did more to intimidate him than anything else. “Don’t forget any of them.”

“I-I-I’ll try not to,” Aziraphale stammered out. He rather wanted to get out of here now, but Sandalphon was blocking the exit. Even if he was half a foot shorter than Aziraphale, there was no question of who would win in a fight. Sandalphon had a thuggish look about him that definitely did not do anything to ingratiate himself with Aziraphale.

Sandalphon, still grinning creepily, grunted, and then finally moved out of the doorway towards the cupboards. Aziraphale abandoned any thoughts of a cup of tea and legged it out of the room in as calm and controlled a manner as possible. 

Safely back in his own room, he locked the door behind him, feeling more than a little nervous about the whole thing.

“Well,” he told himself quietly. “Most of them seem nice _enough_ , at any rate. And none of the rules are _unreasonable_. They’re just establishing boundaries.”

On the other hand, perhaps it would be worth getting a kettle for his bedroom? He could fill it up in the bathroom sink, and keep a stash of non-milk-requiring varieties by his desk for the occasion.

He sat on the bed for a moment or two, hands fidgeting in his lap. Then he remembered the WhatsApp group, and fumbled for his phone to try to figure out what on Earth that was.

* * *

That evening, Aziraphale dared visit the kitchen again for dinner. He wanted to use the university experience to learn how to cook, but since tonight’s plans included a social engagement, he rather didn’t want to risk everything going wrong. So he had decided on a simple microwave meal, of which he had several varieties carefully stacked on his shelf in the fridge.

The communal area was thankfully empty when he arrived, but there was a bright yellow post-it note on the table. Aziraphale peered down at it.

_Party across the landing tonight, if anyone’s interested. If you go, remember the RULES. -M_

Aziraphale frowned. That must have been what the knock on the door was about earlier – Michael had called out ‘I’ll get it’, and then proceeded to have a quiet chat with whoever it was. But it was the first word on the note that was worrying him slightly. _Party._ Crowley had spoken like it was closer to casual drinks than anything else, but _party_ had slightly different connotations.

Well. Either way, he’d said he’d go now. He could always hover for half an hour and then make his excuses and leave. It wasn’t like he had far to go, after all.

He moved over to the fridge and selected a spaghetti carbonara for the evening’s meal. It wasn’t exactly five-star cuisine, but it was the best Tesco’s had on offer, and it was plenty tasty enough to get him ready for whatever tonight had in store.

As the kettle boiled and the microwave whirred, Aziraphale’s thoughts turned once again to the post-it on the table behind him. A _party_. Did that mean he was supposed to dress up? No, almost certainly not, it wasn’t as if they were going _out_ anywhere. Were they? Perhaps this was pre-drinks to a night at some sort of pub or club or something? No, Crowley would have said. Wouldn’t he? He didn’t actually know the man at all, had no idea whether or not he’d have said something.

Then Aziraphale had the horrible thought that he’d been invited over as a joke.

Well, at the very least that put waistcoats and a tie of any sort out of the question. He’d still dress nice – perhaps his new blue shirt – but he certainly wasn’t going to make an effort. Not if he was going to be laughed out of the flat as soon as he knocked on the door.

Oh, this meeting-new-people thing wasn’t ever as easy as everyone seemed to make out. Perhaps he’d be better off not going at all, just curling up in his room with a book and eating biscuits?

The microwave pinged.

_No,_ Aziraphale decided firmly. He was going to go. After all, he may as well have attempted cooking something himself if he wasn’t going to make the effort to socialise this evening, and he hadn’t done that, so he was going to have to socialise. There, that was sound logic.

He tipped out the cooked spaghetti onto a plate and carried it and his cup of tea over to the dining table to eat at. The post-it note stared at him from the other end of the table, and he tried his best to ignore it. Everything would be fine. What was the worst that could happen?

* * *

At quarter to eight, Aziraphale was dressed and ready to go. He sat nervously on his bed, twiddling his thumbs.

At ten to eight, he realised that Crowley had said eight- _ish_ , and that he should probably wait until a little after eight, just in case. He looked over at the packet of biscuits staring invitingly at him from the desk. He looked away.

At five to eight, he heard some noise off in the direction of the flat across the hall, and then the rhythmic thumping of loud music starting up. He crossed the room to his desk and took three biscuits out of the packet.

At eight, he suddenly had a minor panic about crumbs in his teeth, and hurried into the bathroom to brush them quickly.

At five past eight exactly, he knocked on the door of the flat opposite.

No one answered. Probably no one had heard him over the music. Aziraphale didn’t recognise the tune – nor could he tell if there even was a tune at all. It must be one of those modern genres. Be-bop.

After about thirty seconds, he knocked again, louder this time. This time a shout went up, somewhere deeper into the flat. There was a shuffling sound, and then finally the door opened slightly, and Crowley poked his head out.

“Oh! Hey, Aziraphale,” he said, giving an almost childishly-delighted grin. “You came!”

Crowley’s hair was all flicked-up and cool-looking, like it had been earlier, but it was a little less neat than before, like someone else had ruffled it and he hadn’t had the chance to get to a mirror yet. He was also still wearing the sunglasses he’d had on this afternoon. Maybe it was a fashion choice, rather than just sensible for the summer weather.

“Um, yes, I did.” Aziraphale stood awkwardly outside the door, fiddling with one of his shirt sleeves. _Please don’t laugh at me._

“Wasn’t sure ’f you would,” Crowley admitted, pushing the door wider and motioning him to come in with the half-full plastic cup in his hand. “Sorry, the drinks started a bit sooner than I thought. ’M not drunk, but maybe a little tipsy.”

Aziraphale gave a small, strained smile. “Not to worry.”

He stepped apprehensively over the threshold, and Crowley shut the door behind him.

The music was louder inside, and punctuated with the sounds of people partying. There was laugher spiking up through the melody at irregular points, and infrequent shouts coming from further into the flat, as well as a general level of conversation in the corridor itself.

Crowley paused for a moment, looking down at Aziraphale’s hands.

“You don’t have any drinks with you,” he said in a voice of drunken realisation. “That’s okay, you can have some of mine. Wait, _if_ you drink. Do you drink?”

“I do occasionally,” Aziraphale said slowly.

“Great! What do you fancy? There’s a few different spirits with mixers – I think there’s lemonade and coke, and then vodka and whiskey and... gin, I think? Or I’ve got some ciders, if you prefer something more fruity. There’s mixed berry, or a strawberry one, or a lime one – wait, no, I think strawberry and lime are the same one...”

“Strawberry cider sounds lovely,” Aziraphale said quickly. “With or without the lime. Thank you.”

“Right, on it!” Crowley said brightly, and he sauntered off down the corridor, leaving Aziraphale to fend for himself.

The flat was a direct mirror to Aziraphale’s own. Four bedrooms down one side – the left-hand side of the corridor here, as opposed to the right – and two bathrooms, a bedroom, and the kitchen down the other. This last door was where Crowley had just disappeared, and seemed to be where the music was coming from. It wasn’t the only door that was open, though.

To Aziraphale’s right, the bedroom between the bathrooms was wide open, and inside were several students drinking and laughing together, a couple of whom Aziraphale recognised from moving in alongside them earlier. The corridor itself had a number of people hanging out in it, who Aziraphale squeezed past with quiet ‘sorry’s and ‘excuse me’s. The bedroom door opposite the kitchen was open, too, with yet more laughing students drinking from bottles and plastic cups.

Aziraphale followed Crowley into the kitchen, and winced slightly at the increased volume of the music. In here it was packed, people perched on every available surface, including the back of the sofa – except for the dining table, which was covered in drinks of various kinds.

It looked like every horrific version of a house party Aziraphale had ever seen in an American movie, minus the obligatory outside pool and ridiculously cavernous rooms. At least three couples were snogging in various parts of the kitchen – _already? Didn’t the party only just start?_ – a group clustered on and around the sofas seemed to be playing some kind of intense drinking game, and one guy had taken his shirt off and was swinging it round his head like a helicopter propeller.

Aziraphale looked away. He didn’t belong here. This wasn’t his world. It was a mistake to even try. He should just get out now, and make friends with the people on his course, rather than random students in his accommodation block with wildly different interests to his own.

Crowley suddenly popped up out of the throng by Aziraphale’s left shoulder, and pressed a bottle of fruit cider into his hand with a cheery smile. He leaned close to Aziraphale’s ear, and called out over the music: “It’s a bit loud in here, if you want to go somewhere else?”

Gratefully, Aziraphale nodded. Crowley turned and vanished again in the direction of the kitchen door, and Aziraphale followed him hurriedly.

Even tipsy, Crowley seemed impressively adept at weaving around the people littering the flat’s corridor. He paused for a moment at the door at the end, nearest the exit – the one that mirrored Michael’s room, by the looks of it – and fumbled to unlock it while Aziraphale caught up.

“Oop, there we are.” Crowley pushed the door open and led the way in, holding it after him for Aziraphale to come through. “I can leave the door open, if you want,” he added as his new friend crossed into the room. “Don’t want you to think I’ve cornered you here or anything. But I don’t want just anyone barging in, either, you know? Up to you.”

Aziraphale panicked. “Ah, um, well, it’s your room. I-I mean, it would be up to you, I suppose. Ah, yes. Whichever you please.”

Crowley raised his eyebrows over his sunglasses. Then he turned, grabbed a small wooden doorstop from the floor, and carefully wedged the door half-open – enough that it wasn’t shut, and the music from the kitchen still had some sort of quality to it that wasn’t just thumping, but also enough that it wasn’t really open, so no one would walk in accidentally. Even if they did, the wedge was this side of the door, so it wouldn’t open any more than it already was.

“There, how’s that?”

“Ah, yes, good. Thank you.”

Aziraphale was stood in the middle of the room, not quite sure what to do now. He hadn’t, strictly speaking, really been to a house party before, and certainly not one where he’d very quickly ended up in someone else’s bedroom. This was new territory.

He took a swig of his cider.

Crowley made a small, wide gesture. “Feel free to take a seat. Or don’t, if you’d rather. Up to you.”

Aziraphale looked around, and quickly grabbed the desk chair. Crowley shrugged, and threw himself onto the bed, sprawling there like he was posing for a painting of some kind.

“So,” Crowley said slowly, long fingers fiddling with the corner of a pillow. “Aziraphale. What’re you doing here?”

_You invited me?_ “Um, well, I, ah, thought it would be good to meet a few people –”

“Uh, no, sorry. I meant uni. What’re you doing for uni?”

“Oh.” That was easier, he could do that. “English. How about you?”

“Business, apparently,” Crowley said. Aziraphale couldn’t see his eyes at all behind the sunglasses, but he had the distinct impression Crowley had just rolled them. “I’m not entirely sure why. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it once you start,” Aziraphale said kindly. He took another swig of cider. “Thank you for this, by the way. It’s very nice.”

Crowley snorted. “It’s _cheap_ , that’s what it is. Bought it this afternoon. Not sure why they thought a party on their _first night_ would be a good idea, but here we are...”

Somehow, this conversation was making Aziraphale feel a little better about having decided to come over. He sipped again at his drink. It was very sweet, but that suited him just fine, and it rather effectively masked the taste of any alcohol in it, which was a bonus.

He held up the bottle. “You not having any of this?”

“Nah,” Crowley said. “Left mine in the kitchen. Already had more than enough. Should prob’ly get some water, actually. Don’t want to feel like shit in the morning.” He suddenly swung himself upright again, moving from flat on the bed to standing in one impressively graceful move, somewhat undermined by the slight stumble when he then stepped forwards. “Oop. Yeah, definitely need water.” He looked at Aziraphale. “You want anything?”

“No, I’m quite alright, thank you.”

“Cool. Won’t be a minute.” He kicked the wedge out from under the door and let it swing shut behind him.

Suddenly, Aziraphale was alone. In someone else’s bedroom.

He didn’t want to intrude, but he couldn’t help having a bit of a look around the room while he was alone. He didn’t know all that much about Crowley, after all, and it couldn’t hurt to have a couple of topics of conversation ready for when he got back.

At first glance, the bedroom didn’t look all that much different from his own across the landing. It was approximately the same shape and size, and seemed to have the same generic furniture in it – single bed, narrow wardrobe, chest of drawers, desk, chair, and a small bookshelf above the desk. On the surface, the only difference was that Crowley’s bedclothes were all steel-grey – admittedly a rather different aesthetic from Aziraphale’s own – and that there were far fewer books around to clutter the place up. There were no posters on the walls, no picture frames on the surfaces, not even a first-week timetable pinned to the noticeboard on the wall, which at the very least Aziraphale had bothered to put up. But then neither of them had really had much time to properly stamp their marks on their bedrooms yet.

The one thing that did seem to be a little personal was a small potted cactus, sat in the back corner of the desk. _Plants, perhaps? That might work as something to talk about. But it is only a cactus..._

Aziraphale’s next port of call was, of course, to see if there was anything on the little bookshelf that might be of use. There were only a few books there – two large Business textbooks (presumably bought recently for Crowley’s lectures, judging by their rather shiny appearance), a tiny square volume jokingly entitled ‘How to Survive University’, and a slim book too narrow to read what was on the spine. Aziraphale was about to reach for it when the door opened, and Crowley came back in.

“Oh, good, I haven’t scared you off yet,” he said, smiling broadly. He was holding a rather overfull glass of water, which he gently placed down on the floor beside his bed, before grabbing the doorstop and carefully wedging the door open in exactly the way he had before. “Feel free to run off if you want to, though. I won’t be offended.”

“I’m afraid I’m not particularly used to parties,” Aziraphale said, somewhat apologetically.

“Mmm.” Crowley had flopped onto the bed again, and was now attempting to drink the water sideways out of the glass without spilling it everywhere.

“So, ah...” Aziraphale cast around for something to say. “What do you like to do in your free time?”

Crowley shrugged, then swore as some of the water tipped out of his glass at the movement. “Uh, mess around, mostly. Don’t really have any hobbies.”

“No?” Well, where on Earth were they meant to go from here, then? “Nothing you like to do for fun?”

“Oh, you know. Hang out with friends. Get convinced into making bad decisions. Stuff like this.” He indicated the side of his face, where a serpent was coiled delicately beside his ear.

Aziraphale had noticed the tattoo when they first met. He’d never really considered himself the kind of person who understood tattoos – oh, he got the appeal of decorating one’s skin, certainly, but not the permanence of their nature, the risk that they wouldn’t always remain sharp and beautiful or relevant to one’s life. But Crowley’s tattoo, oddly enough – despite it being on his face, and despite it being outwardly obnoxious – seemed to suit him very well. It should have put Aziraphale off from coming to the party tonight (what book nerd goes to a gathering organised by someone with a face tattoo?) but it had blended very rapidly with the rest of Crowley’s features, and now just seemed to gel with his aesthetic.

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said quietly. “I think it looks rather dashing.”

Crowley’s cheeks suddenly went almost as red as his hair. Aziraphale baulked a little, and glanced down at the half-finished bottle of cider in his hand.

“Oh, ah, sorry, I don’t...” _Try not to panic, try not to panic._ “I didn’t mean...”

“No, no, you’re fine,” Crowley said, waving a hand, attempting to dispel the sudden awkwardness between them. “Don’t worry about it. But thanks. I’m glad that’s not the worst decision I’ve ever made.”

Aziraphale nodded, and – against his better judgement – stopped himself from saying anything worse by drinking more of the cider.

“What about you, then?” Crowley asked after a moment. “Any hobbies? Reading anything good at the moment?”

“Actually, I’ve just finished with my reading list for this semester. Managed to get through _Paradise Lost_ just before I got here.”

“That the long poem-y one?”

“Yes. Milton.”

“Mmm, I’ve heard of it. Any good?”

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale began enthusiastically. “Well, it’s a little difficult to manage if you’re not used to that kind of thing, but _I_ liked it. Lots of beautiful language and interesting discussions. I imagine there’ll be a lot to cover when we start analysing it.”

“Sounds fun.”

The words were flat, almost sarcastic, but when Aziraphale looked up, Crowley was staring intently at the floor, biting his lip a little, like he regretted saying anything at all.

“What do you like to read?” he asked tentatively.

“Me?” Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Eh, not really a big reader, me. Don’t tend to read books all that much. Films, TV shows, music, that’s more my thing.”

“Oh, well. Which of those have you enjoyed lately?”

Crowley ran a long-fingered hand through his own hair, making it stick up at a different set of odd angles. He reached down to set his half-empty glass of water on the floor, then pulled himself more upright, into a sitting position against the wall.

“You’re actually interested, aren’t you?”

“What?” Aziraphale said uncertainly. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

“I mean you...” Crowley sighed, then pushed his glasses up a little to rub at the bridge of his nose. “You actually want to know the answers. Like, I’ll say something, and you’ll actually listen.”

“Isn’t that how a conversation is supposed to work?”

“Well, yeah, but, I mean...” Another sigh, another hand through his hair. “I’m not explaining this well. I mean when you meet someone you usually chat a bit about the weather and ‘how do you do’ and all that, and then when you run out of things to talk about you choose something neutral but relevant. Like, here it would be the party or how you’re feeling about uni – something we could just talk inanely about for a while until you’ve finished your drink and it’s not too soon for you to seem rude when you leave. But you’re... you’re asking about _me_. And, like, trying to find a topic we can talk about _deeper_. Does that...” He suddenly looked a little pink-cheeked again, like he’d realised he was doing something he wasn’t meant to. “Does that make any sense at all?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said slowly. “Yes, I suppose it does.” He paused for a moment. “Is that a problem?”

“No! No, not at all. ’S nice. Makes a change.”

“Right.” Honestly, Aziraphale was growing a little concerned about who on Earth Crowley had been hanging out with who had convinced him to get a facial tattoo but had never thought to ask him what his favourite film was. “Well, in that case – what would you like to talk about?”

“Well, er...” A long string of garbled noises came out of Crowley’s mouth, amounting to not much at all in the way of actual words, and ending with the slightly dejected-sounding phrase: “I don’t know.”

“Okay...” Aziraphale frowned, then finished off his cider, using the time to come up with a suitable question that might lead to deeper discussion. Crowley wasn’t looking at him, having let his head tilt back against the wall. Whether his eyes were shut or he was staring at the ceiling, there was no way of knowing.

“Why a snake?”

“Hmm?”

“Your tattoo. Why a snake?”

“Oh. I just... like them, I guess. Feels very me. I mean –” he gestured loosely at the side of his face. “You know.”

“Sorry, you’ve lost me again.”

“Oh. Shit.” Crowley sat up suddenly. “Yeah, you _don’t_ know. Sorry. Um, I...”

Aziraphale watched the other person’s hands curl into fists on his knees, and had the sense he had stumbled into something very personal here.

“My eyes,” Crowley began. “I’ve got a condition. Makes them sensitive.”

“Oh! Hence the sunglasses.”

“Yeah. But they also... look a bit weird. Like a snake. So, yeah. There’s that.”

Aziraphale wanted nothing more in that moment than to see what they looked like. But he also realised – with perfect clarity, despite the creeping sense that the alcohol might be starting to have an impact – that his new friend was very sensitive about this, and that asking for that probably wasn’t the best course of action right now.

“Ah. So you... I suppose, relate to snakes, somehow?”

“Yeah, you could say that. And they’re fun to sketch – all the coils and scales and stuff, you know? And so I was just doodling them a lot, and Luke comes over and says – ‘hey, Crowley’, he says, ‘that would make a cool tattoo’ – and, well, next thing you know, this.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened. “Wait, so... You designed that yourself?”

“Oh. Yeah. Basically. I mean, the artist refined it a little, made it work for a tattoo rather than just a doodle, but. Yeah.”

“Woah. That’s... really cool, actually.” Aziraphale was genuinely impressed. “Do you draw much?”

“Not really. Just in margins and stuff. Helps me focus.” He looked up, pink colouring his cheeks again, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but smile a little at that. _You’re not saying too much, don’t worry. I won’t judge you._

Unfortunately, that was the moment someone decided to try to barrel into the room.

“Oop, that’s what the wedge is for,” Crowley said, getting up and peering round the half-open door. “You alright there, Hastur?”

“Fine,” a low grunt came back, followed by a sentence that Aziraphale couldn’t hear over the noise in the corridor.

“Yeah, well, the loo’s that one. Or that one, if you’d prefer. Definitely not in here though.”

Hastur was in the middle of saying something else when the sound suddenly became much more like retching, and Crowley jumped backwards away from the door.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” He flashed an apologetic look back at Aziraphale. “Looks like you might actually be stuck in here for a bit now. He’s just thrown up all across the doorway.”

Aziraphale put his empty bottle on the desk and stood. “Right.”

There was movement and jeering outside the door as Hastur was apparently hauled to his feet and dragged to a bathroom. Crowley kicked the doorstop out from its place and slowly swung it wide to reveal the mess beyond. The couple of people left nearby laughed and moved away, leaving only the two of them in the vicinity.

“Sorry,” Crowley said, running a hand through his hair again. “Not your best first experience of a party. I’ll see you around though, yeah?”

“What are you talking about? I’ll help you clean up.”

“What?” Crowley looked genuinely shocked at that. “No, you don’t have to.”

“True. But I will. Is there a mop or something here somewhere?”

Crowley didn’t argue further. It didn’t take too long, with the two of them doing it. Hastur didn’t surface for a while, but when he did there was another guy with him who half-carried, half-dragged him into the bedroom next to Crowley’s. _Ligur_ , Aziraphale was told.

Once they’d cleared up the mess, Crowley pointed out the rest of his housemates, too. Dagon was in her room with several other people, snogging one of them up against her noticeboard while the others laughed, watching. Apparently they were playing some sort of drinking game. Beelzebub was in the kitchen, arguing with someone over the music – Aziraphale did a double-take when he realised it was Gabriel.

“What, really?” Crowley raised his eyebrows. “He looks like a bit of a prick.”

Aziraphale elbowed him in the ribs for that, but didn’t have time to say anything before Gabriel turned on his heel and stormed right past them, out of the kitchen, down the corridor, and out of the flat.

“I think maybe I should go too,” Aziraphale called into Crowley’s ear over the music. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Sorry it was a bit shit.”

Aziraphale smiled. “No, it was fine. Have a good first day tomorrow.”

“You too.”

Aziraphale made his way back to his own flat, locking the door quietly behind him and going straight to his room. He could hear Gabriel barely keeping his voice down as he ranted to Michael in the kitchen – saying something about ‘demons’, from the sounds of it – and decided to leave that conversation until tomorrow.

The music from next door was still loud enough to hear, but it was significantly quieter than it had been on the inside. Plus it was late, and Aziraphale was tired. He fell asleep easily, and managed to avoid dreams of vomit in favour of snakes – and one in particular where the snake-form Satan from _Paradise Lost_ turned into Crowley and handed him an apple.


	3. I’m Lost/I’m Found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter title from _The Amazing Devil_ 's lyrics, this time from ['Wild Blue Yonder'](https://genius.com/The-amazing-devil-wild-blue-yonder-lyrics).
> 
> Warning in this chapter for mentions of alcohol use.

Lectures, unfortunately, were exactly as boring as Crowley expected them to be.

To be fair, it was only the first week, and they were mostly just introductions to the topics they’d be covering rather than any actual learning, but it still wasn’t particularly inspiring or hopeful for how the rest of the year – or his degree as a whole – was going to go.

In the first one, he’d been handed a leaflet about optional modules, and had immediately decided to do as many of them as possible outside of his actual degree subject. What exactly he’d do instead, he had yet to figure out, but there were a fair few options to look through in his own time. He had until the end of the week to sign up for them online, too, so that would be easy to sort.

At least there was some interesting stuff going on around campus. Apparently the Freshers’ Fair lasted all week here, with societies putting up stalls in and around the Students’ Union building to try to entice newcomers to join them – if not with the activities of the society itself, then at least with free sweets or pens.

He spent a bit of time wandering around the stands, peering at the ‘stuff we do!’ leaflets for the TV Society (‘make awesome shows for our Student TV YouTube channel!’), the Mixology Society (‘more than just making cocktails – learn to spin and flip those bottles, too!’), the Driving Society (disappointingly more on the side of ‘learn to drive’ than ‘be enthusiastic about one specific make of car’), and the Drag Society (‘come and strut your stuff, performing gender with the best of us, no matter your identity!’).

He seriously considered the latter, paused for a moment over the Poetry Society, and then in the end only signed up for his degree subject’s society, ‘BusinessSoc’, which seemed to specialise in pub crawls and generic socials rather than anything actually Business-related. It would be good for meeting people, at least, and finding nerds to swap notes with if he ended up missing any lectures. And he could always join something more interesting later, if he wanted to.

* * *

University was everything Aziraphale had dreamed it would be.

His first few lectures were fascinating, going over all the different texts and areas of literary and language history that they’d be covering, plus offering a mouth-watering list of optional modules that he was somehow expected to choose between by the end of the week.

The Freshers’ Fair was brilliant, too. There were an awful lot of people around, which was a little intimidating, but there was also free food on offer – pizza! sweets! cakes! – and a massive range of societies to join. He made sure to visit each stand, scoping out exactly what all of them did before signing up to any.

In the end, he added himself to the email list for the Student Book Club and agreed to go to the introductory sessions for both the English Society and the university newspaper. There were several others he was interested in – there was a Baking Society, a Theatre Society, a Poetry Society, even a Tea Society – but there were limits to his capacity for socialising, so he was careful with what he signed up for.

After all, he had at least three years of this. Plus a Master’s degree. And maybe even a PhD, if he got that far. Plenty of time to try everything.

* * *

“Wassat?” Beez asked, peering over Crowley’s shoulder where he sat at the kitchen table.

“Modules for this year. I get two that don’t have to be Business modules, one each semester. Anything from this list.”

“You have to do Politics,” they said, jabbing the leaflet where the relevant module was listed. “Come hang out with me once a week. We can skive off together.”

Crowley smirked. “Maybe. Can’t fail it though – this is meant to be an easy one, to make up for me being terrible at my actual degree.”

“Nah, it’ll be easy,” Beelzebub said decisively. “That one in particular – they mentioned it in the lecture today, looks like a doddle. Do it.”

“Okay, yeah, sure.” Honestly, it was easier just to say yes than have to make the decision himself. Now he only had to choose one for next semester. “Might mess around and do something completely random in the spring. Maybe History? Biology? Huh, they’ve even got an Astronomy one here...”

“Isn’t that star signs and stuff?” Hastur asked from the other end of the table, looking up from his takeaway kebab.

“No, you dolt,” Beez said, moving over to slap him jokingly on the back of the head. “That’s _astrology_. Astronomy’s like the sciency version.”

“Right,” Hastur said, looking like he had no clue what the difference was at all.

“Cool, well that’s sorted, then,” Crowley said. “Politics and Astronomy. Sounds fun.” He’d fill out the online form later. For now, he was meant to be getting ready for the first meeting of BusinessSoc.

* * *

“Thank you all for coming!” Mary, editor of the student newspaper, said brightly. “This is just an informal session for you all to get a feel for the kind of journalism we do here, no pressure at all to sign up for anything yet – but of course, if there’s anything you’d really love to do, don’t hesitate to say so!”

Aziraphale settled into his seat happily. He’d been nervous on his way here, not being used to large groups of people, but university was all about putting yourself out there – and if he wanted to be an academic, he should be getting all the writing experience he could.

Mary directed all of the ‘staff’ of the student newspaper to introduce themselves and their roles, and then went around the group of prospective journalists, asking each of them for their names and degree subjects. Aziraphale was surprised by the variety of courses his fellow students were studying – there was certainly an overwhelming majority of humanities students, especially English, History, and media-based degrees, but there were also Biology students, Engineering majors, Psychologists, Geographers, even Law students here. Enthusiasm about writing, it seemed, was a unifying factor across subjects.

The newspaper was divided into several subsections, each headed up by a different student ‘staff’ member. There was News, which covered global, national, and local up-to-the-moment stories, and which had a strong online presence, as well as taking the front page of the monthly print edition of the newspaper. There was Culture, which covered things like reviews of new restaurants, theatre productions, and art exhibitions around campus and in the city. And there was Sports, which focused more on the wide variety of teams at the university rather than more well-known events.

“Anything you’d be interested in writing an article about will likely fit into one of those categories. If you’re not sure where your idea should fit, just ask me or one of my colleagues,” Mary said, smiling broadly.

“Now, that’s the end of our little introductory session, and we’re going to go straight into our usual meeting, so you can get a feel of what being part of the newspaper is like on a weekly basis.”

Each subsection discussed their ideas for articles that could be written up, either for the newspaper’s print edition or for posting online, and started dishing them out to members old and new. None of the News ideas particularly interested Aziraphale, but when Culture started listing things that would need reviewing soon, he immediately perked up.

“The Amateurs Theatre are currently doing their annual Shakespeare season,” Theresa, Head of Culture, said. “Their run of _Hamlet_ just finished, but they’re doing _Much Ado About Nothing_ as of this weekend, which is running for about six performances, so if someone wanted to see it sooner rather than later, we could get a review out online ASAP.”

Aziraphale raised his hand nervously. “I could do that.”

“Great. What was your name again?”

“Aziraphale Princip. When would you need it by?”

“Well, if you’re going on Saturday, I’d say by the end of the day Monday, just because this is a time-sensitive one. Usually we’d give you a week at least, but the Amateurs like to encourage as many students to go to their plays as possible, and that means they prefer our reviews to happen before they stop performing.”

“Would it be possible...” Aziraphale found himself saying, before he could stop himself. “Well, maybe not this time around. But in future, perhaps – for us to go to a dress rehearsal rather than the play itself? That would give us more time to get the reviews out before the run finishes.”

Theresa raised her eyebrows and looked at Mary.

“We did suggest that to them in passing, once,” Mary said. “But nothing ever came of it. We should put it to them as a proper proposal, I think.”

“Yes,” Theresa agreed. “Thank you, Aziraphale.”

He blushed a little at that, and quickly made a note in his phone’s calendar. _Much Ado, Saturday, due Monday._ He peered at the little noticeboard on the wall of the newspaper’s office, and copied down the email address he should send it to, plus the rough word count expected.

It was nice to be useful. And he did love a good Shakespeare performance, too.

* * *

“And at each bar, they’ll sign or stamp your bingo card,” someone was shouting over the group of laughing freshers. “When we get to the last bar, anyone with a completed sheet gets a free drink. Sound good?”

There were a few whoops and cheers from the crowd. Crowley was regretting coming already.

“Right then, let’s go!”

The mob piled into the nearest bar.

It was a Wednesday night, for fuck’s sake. Apparently that was the done thing round here – student nights were on week nights in the city, with locals drinking out at the weekend. Sounded like a recipe for disaster with regards to 9am lectures, but that was the student life for you.

“Oi, come on, red-head,” someone yelled out. “Crawley, was it?”

“ _Crow_ -ley,” he corrected irritably.

“Right. What you drinking?”

“Nah, don’t worry. I’ll get it myself.” He didn’t fancy being cornered into buying rounds for everyone.

He stayed for the duration of a couple of locations, for appearances’ sake. Pretty much everyone who he tried to talk to seemed to be some form of utter dickhead. As they were travelling to the third bar, he slipped away from the group – feigning a headache when one guy, Eric, noticed – and quietly got the bus back to his flat.  
BusinessSoc, he’d decided, wasn’t worth the entry fee.

This was going to be a fun three years.

* * *

“Happy Friday,” Aziraphale said cheerily as Michael walked into the kitchen.

She rolled her eyes. “Please never say that _ever_ again.”

Aziraphale frowned momentarily, then shrugged and went back to doing his washing up. Dinner had been pasta and cheese with a tomato and basil sauce – homemade – and he was feeling rather pleased with himself. It had taken him all afternoon, but luckily he had that time off for this first week, so he’d made the best use of it. Cooking, it turned out, wasn’t his strong suit, but he hadn’t burned or overcooked the pasta, and the sauce had turned out okay, so he was counting it as a win.

“Doing anything fun tonight?” he asked over his shoulder, as Michael searched the fridge for something to cook.

“Reading the entirety of Gray’s Anatomy,” she quipped back. “Medical students don’t get a social life.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not entirely true,” Aziraphale said encouragingly. “There’s a society, isn’t there? I saw it at the Freshers’ Fair. They do all kinds of activities to take your mind off studying for a while.”

“Yes, well,” Michael said, dumping a load of vegetables on the kitchen table. “That’s not really my cup of tea.”

Aziraphale decided not to reply to that. He put the last of his washing up on the draining board to dry, and wiped his hands on a tea towel.

“I’ll put that all away when I’m back tonight,” he promised. “I’m going to the English Society’s first meeting!”

Michael didn’t deign to answer. Aziraphale left the room, and tried to decide which shirt he should wear for tonight.

* * *

“Oh, _come on_ ,” Beez said. “You’re doing that module with me, aren’t you?”

“Well, _yeah_ ,” Crowley said, thinking _oh shit I haven’t submitted the form yet_ and subtly pulling his phone out of his pocket to do just that. “But that doesn’t mean I have to join the Politics _Society_.”

“It’s just an introduction session! It’s free, you don’t even have to sign up yet. It’s basically a party, they’ve got drinks and snacks and stuff and it’s a chance to meet people and whatever. I thought you were all about that?”

“I _was_ , but BusinessSoc was a shitshow, and I _know_ this is going to go the same way.”

“Well, come with me and we can take the piss out of everyone, then,” Beez said.

Crowley logged into his student account, and was relieved to find the form still had until midnight before it timed out. He selected the Politics and Astronomy modules from the drop-down lists and hit save.

“ _Crowley_.”

“Okay, yes, fine. Just to stop you going on at me.”

“Great. Now get a shirt on.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” Beez said. “It’s smart-casual. You can’t go looking like that.”

Crowley looked down at his Queen t-shirt and jeans, and sighed.

“Fine. But I’m still wearing jeans.” He had a blazer around here somewhere, and a waistcoat, he was pretty sure. One or other of those would do to smarten him up a little.

* * *

The English Society meeting was on campus, in a room usually used for seminars. Someone had put a PowerPoint slide on the projector that read ‘Welcome, English Freshers!’ with little clipart balloons next to it. The tables had mostly been pushed to the back of the room, but a couple at the front had cakes, biscuits, and paper plates laid out on them.

Aziraphale tried to be restrained when choosing what food to try, but it was difficult. There was an impressive variety of food available, including several homemade-looking options, and a whole load of baked goods marked ‘vegan’. He told himself he could always come back for seconds.

The back corners of the room were already taken by skulking introverts, so Aziraphale settled for a chair at the side, from where he could get a good look at the rest of the room.

Mary, the editor of the student newspaper that Aziraphale had signed up to write for, was chattering away to a few students by the projector, who he assumed were the English Society’s committee. A few of the other people around the room he recognised, too, from the introductory lectures he’d been attending this week. One particularly noticeable one was the older woman with unnaturally ginger hair and a very vibrant fashion sense. Aziraphale smiled a little, watching her talk with a stunned-looking young man and another woman who looked like she was barely stopping herself from laughing aloud. This seemed like someone worth getting to know.

“Um, hi.”

Aziraphale looked up. “Hello?”

A student he vaguely recognised was standing next to him, holding a large slice of Victoria sponge and looking so awkward there was a danger he might vanish through the floor at any moment.

It took Aziraphale a second to remember where he knew this person from. “Oh! I saw you on moving in day. You’re in my block of flats, aren’t you?” He tried to remember what he’d heard the woman in the car – presumably this student’s mother – calling after him. “Newton, isn’t it?”

“Um, yes. Newt’s fine, though.”

“Newt.” Aziraphale smiled. “Well, lovely to meet you properly. I’m Aziraphale.”

He looked down for a moment at his plate and realised half of the contents had somehow vanished already. Carefully picking out a French fancy from what remained, he used it to gesture vaguely at the room. “So you’re doing English too?”

“Yes. Well, um, partly. I’m doing a joint honours degree.”

“Oh, that’s exciting! What’s your other subject?”

“Classics,” Newt said, with the air of one admitting something embarrassing.

“That sounds fascinating,” Aziraphale said, attempting encouragement. “What made you want to do that?”

“Well, I didn’t, really.” Newt was starting to look downright miserable. “I wanted to do Computer Science, but I didn’t have the right A Levels for it. And then I thought I could do English and Maths, and maybe move onto Computing later, but they don’t seem to do that anywhere as a joint course. And then I thought, well, I want to do Maths then, because it’s computer-adjacent, I’ll just go for that. But there was a mix-up with the systems, and, well... here I am!”

Aziraphale put another bite of cake in his mouth to avoid saying the wrong thing to that, but he nodded in what he hoped came across as a ‘well, all’s well that ends well’ kind of way. _How on Earth did the system mess up that badly?_

“What about you?” Newt said, eyeing his own cake like he wasn’t entirely sure how to eat it.

“Oh, just straightforward English. I’ve always loved books, you see, so it made sense.”

About then was when one of the committee members over with Mary clapped their hands and called for attention, and the room fell quiet as the little group introduced themselves and started discussing the various activities they had planned for the society over the course of the term.

It all sounded rather lovely.

* * *

The Politics Society meeting was in a large space usually reserved for students to sit and chat in. There were several benches of various sizes scattered around for eating at, little nooks for studying in with plug sockets for laptops, and a small bank of vending machines in the back corner.

Most of these little havens had been barricaded off for the event, leaving only a wide space for mingling and nowhere to hide. Someone from the society had even taken the time to go around spreading white tablecloths on every available surface, giving the tables an air of undeserved extravagance. One of these was laden with various drinks, and waiters in all-black were gliding around with platters of canapés.

As Beelzebub had said, the dress code was certainly smart-casual, though they and Crowley were firmly on the ‘casual’ end of that spectrum, and several other students there had swung _hard_ for the ‘smart’ side of things. Crowley shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

“What exactly are we supposed to be doing here?”

“You know,” Beez said, adjusting their too-big black blazer with an air of confidence Crowley _wished_ he had. “Meeting people. Chatting. Free food, free drinks.”

“Right.” Would it be rude to walk in and just head straight for the alcohol? Should he take a circuit of the room first, say polite hellos to random strangers? Could he just start nabbing tiny versions of food, and by the end of the night have eaten enough that he didn’t need to make dinner when he got home?

They wandered into the room together, Crowley doing his best not to look too out of place. He should be used to this, really, but he never had felt at home during one of his parents’ parties. Not that he’d been allowed to attend most of them.

“Ooh, look, there’s that fucker from the other night,” Beez buzzed in Crowley’s ear. “One of the angels from the flat opposite.”

Crowley followed their gaze, and saw Gabriel, the American guy from Aziraphale’s flat, wearing a grey suit, a pale purple tie, and a massively false grin, talking to a bunch of other students like he was the most interesting thing in the universe.

“‘Angels’?”

“Yeah.” Beez shrugged. “You know, dickheads who think they’re better than everyone else. Whole flat of them, by the sounds of it.”

Crowley tried not to have flashbacks to Sixth Form. _Does everyone call people ‘angels’? I thought that was just Luke._

He shook himself and realised Beez was still staring daggers at Gabriel, who had yet to notice them. “Didn’t you get into a shouting match with him over the music at our house party?”

“Yep!” Beelzebub was grinning, and Crowley had a horrible feeling they were already planning on reigniting that particular argument.

“Oh god, no, don’t.”

“What?” Beez said innocently.

“Don’t cause a scene. If you do, I’m leaving without you.”

“Cause a _scene_? What are you, my mother?”

Crowley shrugged. “Fine, whatever. I’m getting a drink.”

He made his way over to a table laden with plastic glasses of prosecco, looking back to see Beez marching firmly towards Gabriel. _Ugh, I can’t watch._

Crowley turned away, and accidentally made eye contact with someone nearby, who quickly began to move towards him. _Ah, shit._

A broad-shouldered man wearing an obviously tailored suit, Crowley half expected the guy to announce he’d been to Eton before even asking for Crowley’s name, so he was slightly surprised when he opened his mouth and an American accent came out. “Hi. Thaddeus Dowling. When’s this thing wrapping up? Do you know if there’s a proper party planned for afterwards?”

“Uh, I don’t know, sorry, I just got here.” He shrugged awkwardly and mentally prepared himself to endure a rather painful few minutes of small talk.

“You just got here?” Thaddeus scoffed, looking derisive. “Sloppy work.”

“Wha– I’m not _working_ here. I’m a _guest_.”

The American raised an eyebrow sceptically, then actually pointedly looked him up and down. “Hmm.”

Crowley shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, unsure whether he should be arguing his right to be here or just fucking off and never returning.

Luckily – or unfortunately, depending on which way you looked at it – he was spared any more of this particular torture by Thaddeus suddenly focusing on something over Crowley’s shoulder and saying “What’s going on over there?”

The American marched off past Crowley, the latter barely containing a cringe as he turned around to see Beelzebub and Gabriel, standing six feet apart and glaring at each other like they were about to draw pistols. They’d already accumulated quite a crowd.

Crowley checked his watch. _Five minutes._ Now that was impressive.

“Really?” Gabriel was saying in a stage whisper. “We are at an _event_. Could you not _control yourself_ for two _seconds_?”

“All I asked was why you felt the need to storm into my flat the other night without permission,” Beez replied, not taking the same courtesy to keep their voice down.

“I was asking, _very politely_ , I might add, for you to turn your music down,” Gabriel practically hissed.

“And I, very politely, declined. You were the one who made it an argument.”

“It was past nine o’clock!”

“It was before ten. Which is the time the accommodation rules say we have to shut up at.”

“You insufferable little –” Gabriel took a step closer, threateningly, which was the wrong thing to do. Beez took two steps closer in response, and Gabriel, now suddenly chest-to-chest with them, was on the back foot.

“Oh, bloody Hell,” Crowley muttered under his breath.

He glanced behind him at the untouched table of alcohol, wondering how much he could down before he got kicked out from association. He considered for a second stepping forward to try to separate the two of them. Then he realised he didn’t actually have to do anything at all. In fact, he could just leave.

_Eh, better to be called a coward than be yelled at for ruining Beez’s fun._ He didn’t think he’d have enjoyed the party anyway.

Bloody Hell, this whole thing was a mess. Why did he ever think uni would be a good idea?

* * *

The walk home wasn’t a particularly long one – twenty minutes, if he moved quickly – but Crowley found himself dawdling, moping about his situation, and wishing he’d never let all this happen.

His degree was rubbish, his classmates were dicks, his flatmates were more of the same, and he just wanted to curl up somewhere with either a tub of ice cream or a bottle of something strong and watch videos of ducklings or something.

Actually, he _could_ do that. This was university, after all.

“Crowley?”

He looked up sharply at the intrusion on his sulking, and found Aziraphale stood right next to him. He stopped.

“Well, fancy running into you here!”

“Oh. Hi, Aziraphale.” Crowley wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to deal with a conversation with this particular person right now. He’d already had a shitty enough week – he didn’t want to fuck up the one good thing in amongst it all.

“Still here, then?” Aziraphale said, the ghost of a joke touching the words.

Crowley couldn’t help snapping back anyway. “Course I’m still bloody here. Doesn’t mean I want to be.”

“Ah, sorry. I’ve caught you at a bad time.”

Crowley inhaled deeply, scrubbing a hand up his face, over his sunglasses and into his hair. “No, sorry, I’m... Don’t worry.” He sighed. “Just another rough day.”

“Feeling homesick?”

It could have been a casual question, a quick diagnosis that didn’t really require any response. But Crowley looked over, and Aziraphale’s face had that same honest, genuinely-interested quality to it that he’d worn the other night – when solidly-tipsy Crowley had been slightly too open about himself with this almost-stranger.

“It’s not even that,” he said before he could stop himself. “Don’t particularly want to go home. I just... don’t fit in here. Dunno where I would, mind you, but...”

Aziraphale looked at him for a moment, then pulled himself up straighter, smoothed the bottom edge of his jumper down, and clasped his hands in front of him.

“I’m just on my way back from a society meeting.”

“Me too,” Crowley admitted miserably. _Don’t ask._

“Would you like to walk together?”

That gentle face, the simple kindness there. He couldn’t say no.

“Yeah, sure.”

They fell into step together, winding their way up the road away from campus and towards their shared accommodation block. Aziraphale started talking almost immediately.

“So, what in particular has gotten you so down about all this? Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay then. Do you want to talk about something else, or would you rather I just natter on about my life? I’m... not very good at silence, you see.”

“Right. Um, sure. You... fire away.”

Aziraphale launched into an in-depth discussion of his week at once. He started with the introductory lectures he’d been to – what he’d be studying, which books he’d already read, which he was most excited to debate in his seminars. That led into several different tangents, and in the end somehow managed to loop back around to another student who had apparently gotten himself enrolled in English and Classics by accident.

Crowley just listened the whole way back, nodding occasionally, and every so often throwing in a ‘mmm’ or ‘huh’ or ‘really?’ to keep Aziraphale going. It was, in some odd way, rather therapeutic to just listen to someone talk about life in the way Aziraphale did. _Maybe I need to start listening to podcasts._

“He lives somewhere in this block, actually, but we didn’t walk back together because I stayed behind to help tidy up – oh, we’re here.”

Aziraphale stood awkwardly on the landing between their two front doors, one hand fiddling with the opposite sleeve. Crowley watched him, a feeling of soft fondness bubbling up somewhere under his ribcage.

_Oh, Crowley,_ the cynical voice in his mind said. _Look what you’ve gotten yourself into now._

“Ah, sorry for just talking your ear off the whole way back,” Aziraphale said uncomfortably. “I hope it wasn’t too boring for you.”

“No, no, it was... nice.” Crowley smiled despite himself. He actually did feel a whole lot better about everything now. “Thank you.”

_Angel,_ some random part of his mind said. _In the genuine sense. He’s an angel._

“Oh! No problem at all.” Aziraphale flashed a small version of that smile that lit up the world like the sun. _Yep, see? Right there. Angel._ “Glad I could help a little.”

The angel turned to fiddle with his keys at the door, and Crowley pulled his own keys out of his pocket, but he didn’t move to go into his own flat, waiting for Aziraphale to get his door open first. He did, and then turned that angelic face back to Crowley.

“It was lovely to see you again. I hope things get better and you settle in soon.”

“Thanks, Aziraphale. It was good to see you too.”

The blond smiled again, gave a little wave, and then disappeared into his flat. Crowley stood there a moment longer, bewildered at his own improved mood, and then turned and unlocked his front door.

Perhaps things weren’t as bad as they could be, after all.


	4. Look for an Earthquake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title is from William Shakespeare's _Much Ado About Nothing_. It's a line Benedick says near the beginning of the play, when insisting he will never get married; Don Pedro tells him that "thou wilt quake for [love] shortly", and Benedick replies "I look for an earthquake too, then". I think we know when Crowley's 'earthquake' is in the show _*cough* Eden *cough*_ , so...
> 
> Lots of discussion of that play in this chapter, btw. If you haven't seen the performance David Tennant and Catherine Tate did of it, I'd highly recommend doing so before reading this chapter...
> 
> Warning in this chapter for Gabriel portion-size-shaming Aziraphale, and a brief mention of alcohol use.
> 
> Look out for some extra notes after the footnotes at the end of this chapter, btw!

Saturday dawned just as sunny and optimistic as it had the week before, and Crowley got up smiling.

 _Fuck it,_ he thought. Uni was meant to be for having fun, doing things you couldn’t at home, just being yourself or whatever. Why didn’t he just do something for himself today?

He hadn’t been into town properly yet (he didn’t count the couple of bars he’d drunk at on the pub crawl the other day), and that seemed like as good a place as any to start.

No one else in the flat was up yet, and probably wouldn’t be for a while, judging by what he’d noticed of their sleep schedules for the past week. He hadn’t even heard Beelzebub come in last night after whatever happened at the Politics Society meeting, so hopefully they weren’t lying in a ditch somewhere. He made a mental note to text them at some point before lunch to check they were still alive.

Crowley grabbed his wallet and keys, took a moment to look up car parks in the city on his phone, then left the building and got into the Bentley for the first time in a week.

“Hello there,” he murmured softly to the vehicle, running his hands reverently across the steering wheel.

_There, see? Life’s looking better already._

* * *

Aziraphale woke early, as he usually did, and set about organising the notes he’d made during his first week. He’d decided on getting a ring-binder for each module, and had bought a brightly-coloured set of them at the Students’ Union shop when he was on campus, as well as printing off the syllabus for each set of lectures and seminars. Now he just had to hole-punch the pages and put them in the right folders. It was quite relaxing work, really.

Once that was done, and the folders shelved above the desk in rainbow order, he wandered to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

* * *

With no set plan for what he wanted to do today, Crowley spent most of the morning wandering around various shops. At some point he decided he should probably make his uni bedroom a little more personalised, and started looking for posters or knick-knacks to spruce up the décor.

By lunchtime he had acquired a James Bond poster from Forbidden Planet, an impressively long black plushie snake from The Entertainer, a basil plant from one of the market stalls in the town square, and a whole load of fairy lights for no apparent reason.

He celebrated a job well done with coffee from Costa and a sausage roll from Greggs, [4] perching on a bench in the square to eat and appreciate his haul.

Just as he was deciding what to do for the rest of the afternoon, his mobile buzzed in his pocket. It was Beez, replying to the ‘how are you after last night’ text Crowley had sent earlier. The message just read ‘great’ with a winking emoji, which Crowley assumed was a typo. ‘Glad you’re not dead, then’, he texted back, and shoved his phone away again.

Clothes shopping sounded like a fun activity to try out next.

* * *

Michael and Uriel were already in the kitchen when Aziraphale got around to making lunch.

“Well, exactly,” Michael was saying. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Hi!” Aziraphale said cheerfully, going to his cupboard for sandwich ingredients and crisps.

“Hello,” Michael said. Uriel just grunted.

Jam sounded like a good sandwich filling for today. Strawberry jam, and maybe some peanut butter, too? That was always a good combination. Aziraphale wondered idly whether Gabriel liked the combination too – it was an American recipe, after all, right?

It wasn’t until he was halfway through making lunch that he realised the conversation behind him hadn’t resumed. The silence felt more intense, all of a sudden, and only grew in weight as time stretched on. _Were they talking about me?_

He finished with the spreads and put them away, grabbing some crisps and fruit to have too, and then gave a smile to the other two as he left the room.

Perhaps it was paranoia, but as Aziraphale went back to his room, he was sure the conversation started up again. Just at the moment when the kitchen door swung shut.

He tried not to think about it too much.

* * *

Shopping was fun when you didn’t have any sorts of standards or constraints other than what you liked the look of. Primark had been a bit of a revelation, and New Look had been far more of a positive experience than Crowley had expected.

By mid-afternoon, he’d acquired quite a collection of (mostly black) clothes, including a couple of new pairs of jeans, a faux-leather jacket (was that good because it wasn’t made of animal? Or bad because that meant it was probably all plastic?), and a couple of pairs of magnetic earrings that had caught his eye in the window of Claire’s Accessories. He’d considered taking them up on the offer in the window about ear piercings, but had eventually decided that was probably one rash decision too far for his first week away from home.

He wasn’t quite done exploring what else was on offer here, but the bags had become a little unwieldy to keep carrying around, so he went back to the Bentley to deposit his purchases. The boot wasn’t big, so some of it had to be shoved onto the back seat. Crowley took a bit of time to carefully strap in the basil plant, just so it wouldn’t run the risk of accidentally tipping over when he drove off later. He also tipped the remains of a half-drunk water bottle into the pot to make sure it didn’t dry out too much before he got it home.

Then he thought for a second, and dug around his new purchases until he found the aforementioned leather jacket, snapping off the price tag before shrugging it on. It was bound to get cold later, so it was better to be prepared.

As Crowley left the carpark, something caught his eye. _Not really a big reader,_ he’d said. That wasn’t entirely true. And there was one particular book he was interested in getting his hands on now.

The bookshop was clean and modern, full of clearly-labelled identical shelves and little tables with signs on them to draw the eye. ‘Future classics’, one cried. ‘Historical fiction’, another called out. ‘Diverse sci-fi and fantasy’, a third proclaimed. None of those were what he was specifically looking for.

There was a poetry shelf at the back, beside some non-fiction shelves that contained several biographies of literary figures. Crowley scanned the books, searching for the title and name he wanted.

_Maybe they don’t have it._

_But no, they must do. There’s a university here._

He wandered over to the counter, and caught the eye of one of the people working there. “Hi, sorry,” he began. “I’m looking for something and I can’t find it on the shelf. Do you know if you have it, or if I can order it in?”

A young woman with ‘Erica’ on her name badge smiled at him and offered to look the book up in the computer system, but as soon as he said the title she frowned. “It should be there. Where were you looking?”

“Poetry,” Crowley said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“Ah, that’ll be why. We have a separate bookcase with the Penguin Classics on it, it’ll be there. Right this way.”

In a corner near where Crowley had been looking, a whole shelf of identical spines looked out. Erica found the right one almost immediately regardless, and handed it over. “We do have a hardback with a nicer cover, if you want?”

Crowley looked at the large snake and inexplicable parrot, and decided this was more what he wanted.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. This one’s to read and make notes in. I’ll come back if I like it enough to get a nice version.”

Erica grinned at him, and led the way back towards the counter. “You doing English, then?”

“Uh, no, actually. Business.”

“Oh! Fair enough.”

“How about you?”

“Yeah, English. Fairly predictable for someone who works in a bookshop.” She laughed and scanned the book. “I did this one in first year, that’s why I thought...”

“Oh, yeah. A friend of mine’s studying it this year, but I just like poetry. It’s one of those ones that I’ve known about for a while, thought now was as good a time as any to give it a go.”

She looked up at him for a second, searching the parts of his face that weren’t hidden by sunglasses. Crowley didn’t know what she was searching for, or whether she found it. She looked away all the same, told him the price, and asked whether he wanted a bag.

“Um, no, I can live without. Thanks.” He pulled out a card to pay, thanked her for her help, and turned to go.

As he got to the door, he noticed a series of posters in the window he hadn’t seen on the way in. He frowned, checked his watch, then shrugged. _Why not?_ He took a quick photo of one in particular, then left, heading first for the Bentley to put away his new book, and then in search of a box office to see if there were any tickets left.

* * *

Tonight – or rather, this afternoon, in case he messed up and it took far longer than he expected – Aziraphale was trying to make curry.

He was cheating, really. All he had to do was cook the chicken enough that it wouldn’t give him food poisoning, then he would pour a jar of sauce into the pan, stir it around for a few minutes until it was warmed through, and then serve with rice and naan. The difficult bit, though, was having three things happening at the same time. Curry in one pot, rice in another, and then the naan in the oven.

He only burnt the naan a little. And the rice wasn’t _too_ soggy. Yes, he’d call this one a win, too.

Gabriel came into the kitchen just as Aziraphale was dishing up.

“Woah, that’s a lot of food,” he said, eyebrows raised. He was wearing running clothes again, and started doing his usual stretches in the small space by the table.

“I made it!” Aziraphale said proudly, presenting the plate to Gabriel.

“Huh. Um, well done.” Somehow that seemed patronising. He probably hadn’t meant it to be.

There was still plenty of curry in the pan, so Aziraphale dug out a couple of Tupperware pots from his cupboard and scooped the rest into them. He’d put the lids on when he was finished eating and freeze them for another time. There wasn’t much else in his freezer drawer at the moment, so there’d be plenty of room. Maybe that was the way to go with cooking.

Aziraphale rinsed out both pans and then left them on the side to wash up later, double-checked he’d turned off both hob rings and the oven, then headed over to the table to eat.

“Hearty meal,” Gabriel said, hooking a foot up on the back of a chair to stretch his leg.

“Yes! I do love a good curry. I think I might have made a little bit too much rice, but I don’t mind. The packet said 75 grams was enough of a portion for one person, but that looked so little, so I added a bit extra.”

Gabriel swapped legs. “Hmm. Well, you don’t want to do that _too_ often, you know.”

Aziraphale gave an uncomfortable smile and looked down at his food. It wasn’t _that_ big of a meal. But he _had_ done an entire naan, which was probably more than necessary. Maybe next time he should get those mini ones.

He sat for a moment, fork poised over his food, other arm unconsciously hugging himself.

“Right, I’m off,” Gabriel said with far too wide of a smile. “See you later. Don’t forget to wash up!”

“I won’t,” Aziraphale said quietly as the American jogged out the door.

He kept staring at his food for another few minutes. Then the delicious smell got the better of him, and he shrugged. _I’ve made it now, may as well eat it. No sense in it going to waste._

He didn’t stop thinking about it for a while, though.

* * *

Crowley decided to treat himself for dinner. There was a nice-looking restaurant just down the road from the theatre, a dim-lit place with eclectic décor that looked right up his street. The staff didn’t bat an eyelid when he asked for a table for one, and set him up in a nice little corner from where he could see the whole room.

He had plenty of time to waste before he needed to be anywhere, so he ordered a starter as well as a main. It was nice to have some time to himself while he ate, for a change.

The restaurant was quiet, but there was a satisfying level of ambient noise from the subtle background music, the sounds from the kitchen, and the hum of conversation at the few occupied tables. _This would be a nice place to come to with someone,_ he thought, stopping himself short of following that thought too much further.

* * *

“ _Princip_ ,” Aziraphale shouted, trying to enunciate properly whilst also making himself heard over the racket of everyone in the foyer talking. “I bought my ticket online.”

“Oh, _Princip_ ,” the box office attendant said finally, flipping through the box of unclaimed tickets to ‘P’ and fishing out Aziraphale’s. “Apologies for that.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He turned to head towards the stairs, and almost walked smack into someone.

“Oh, sorry!”

“Aziraphale?”

An increasingly-familiar pair of sunglasses topped with red hair was looking at him.

“Crowley! What are you doing here?”

“I came for the play,” he shrugged. “I take it you did too.”

“Well, yes. Of course. I just... didn’t think it would be your sort of thing.”

Crowley looked a little confused. “Why not? Shakespeare’s for everyone, isn’t it? Thought that was the point?”

Aziraphale paused. Technically speaking... he wasn’t wrong.

“Besides, this one’s a comedy! I like the funny ones.” Crowley flashed a grin. “Where are you sat?”

“Ah, um, Royal Circle.”

“Me too!”

They both peered down at their tickets to compare seats.

“Same block, by the looks of it, but I’m three rows behind you,” Crowley said.

“I bought mine online,” Aziraphale said, feeling the inexplicable need to explain himself. “I just took an end seat, since I was on my own.”

“I only bought mine this afternoon,” Crowley said. “There were still quite a few gaps, but I grabbed an end one on a full row so I wouldn’t risk messing anyone else up. If your row isn’t entirely full, though, we could sit together, if you want?”

Aziraphale gave a wavering smile. “Only if the person next to me doesn’t show up. I don’t want to cause any unnecessary bother.”

Crowley shrugged. “Yep, fair enough.” He looked at the people milling around them, then at the large clock on the wall. “Should we go find our seats?”

They headed up the stairs together, out of the throng in the foyer and into a short queue where staff members were checking tickets and pointing people to their seats.

“Sorry again, by the way,” Aziraphale said as they waited. “That’s the second time I’ve walked straight into you.”

“Don’t worry about it. My fault, anyway. Both times.”

“Oh! You’re very kind.”

Crowley made a noise that sounded somewhat like a sarcastic snort. “Nah, ’m not. Just honest.”

Aziraphale decided not to argue further, and a moment later they were counting the rows to their seats.

“Here’s me,” Crowley said, gesturing to an aisle seat six rows back from the edge of the circle.

Aziraphale took another few steps down towards the front and found his own seat. “This one’s mine.”

Only about a third of the seats up here were taken, the performance still not due to start for several minutes. Crowley sauntered down past Aziraphale to the edge of the circle and leaned down over the railing.

“Careful, Crowley!” Aziraphale said, suddenly envisioning something horrible happening. “You might fall!”

“I’ll be fine,” he said to the Stalls below, then he swung upright and looked back at Aziraphale, still up by his seat a couple of steps above. “Thanks for caring, though.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that. Aziraphale was struck by the same concern he had had at the party: that Crowley’s friends were perhaps not particularly adept at friendship at all. He frowned, and then cautiously went to join the redhead.

“Ooh, it’s a bit high, isn’t it?”

Crowley smirked. “Not a fan of heights?”

“Not particularly.” Aziraphale was gripping the top of the railing, firmly keeping himself a forearm’s length away from the edge. “Healthy fear of falling, is all. I don’t much like flying, either.”

“Oh, I love flying,” Crowley said, looking out over the open space in front of them. “Seeing the Earth shrink below you until everything looks like little toys, and then being amongst the clouds... It’s beautiful.” He looked wistful for a moment.

Aziraphale marvelled at how expressive his new friend’s face was, even with most of it covered by sunglasses. The way his eyebrows emoted perfectly without needing to see the eyes themselves, the way his mouth could twist into a million different smiles that each meant something different... Crowley was a very interesting person to know, Aziraphale decided.

“I always thought I’d choose flying. You know, when you’re a kid and people ask what superpower you’d want? I always thought flying would be the best.” Crowley’s voice was quiet, lost somewhere in the depths of a memory. Then he seemed to remember where he was, who he was with, and shook himself out of it.

“Right, let’s get seated. Must be starting in a sec anyway, yeah?”

“Ah, yes,” Aziraphale said, stepping back from the railing and fumbling for the time. “Four minutes. I’m meant to be making notes on this, so... See you at the interval?”

Crowley glanced up towards the seats above them, then nodded. His row was full except for his place now, and the two seats beside Aziraphale’s had been occupied by an older couple. “See you then.”

The two parted, and Aziraphale set about preparing for the show. He had a pocket notebook and pencil to make shorthand notes on the interpretation of the play – set dressing, costuming, interesting artistic choices and the like – to remind himself later when he came to write his review.

He also _didn’t_ have any snacks, because that would distract him from making notes. He tried to ignore the couple next to him, who were sharing a bag of Werther's Originals between them. _I’m not hungry,_ he told himself firmly.

Then the houselights went down and the music started up, and the first half of one of Aziraphale’s favourite plays began.

* * *

The play _was_ funny. Crowley couldn’t remember studying this particular one at school, but he’d done enough GCSE essays on Shakespeare to at least be able to understand _most_ of what they were saying, and lots of the jokes were accompanied by exaggerated acting to punctuate the point anyway. It wasn’t massively Shakespearean, as Crowley understood it – no neck ruffs or hose – but honestly that didn’t matter; the modern twist added some extra entertainment to the play, and it was clear that the performers were genuinely enjoying themselves. There was some decent talent on display, too.

Beatrice was his favourite, almost instantly. ‘I would burn my study’ – ha! Forget whatever was going on with Claudio and Hero, Beatrice and Benedick were the important ones.

By the time the hen night and stag do were over and the scene was set for the humiliation at the wedding, Crowley had almost forgotten he was in a theatre. When the stage went dark and the houselights went up, the first thing that shot through his head was that there must have been a power cut, or why else would someone have paused the film? Then he realised, and looked around blearily at his fellow audience members.

Most people were getting up and heading back out into the foyer for refreshments or toilet breaks. Crowley scrambled out of his seat to let the rest of his row out, and noticed Aziraphale was doing the same for the older couple that had sat next to him. He waited until there was a gap in the traffic, then slipped down to appear by Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“Hey!” he said, grinning, and was treated to one of those blinding smiles that did something funny to his insides. “Whaddya think so far?”

“Oh, it’s _wonderful_! I do so _love_ this play.”

Crowley wondered whether Aziraphale was aware that he spoke like the lead character in a Jane Austen novel.

“It’s not bad, is it? I reckon there’ll be a great big double wedding at the end when they’ve figured out what’s going on.”

“You mean you haven’t seen this one before?”

Crowley shook his head.

“Or read it?”

“Nope.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale was fiddling with his sleeve again. Crowley wondered whether he was aware of the habit. “I assumed you would know it if you were paying to see it.”

“Nah, but I’ve seen a few of the others. _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , that’s a weird one, but good fun. _Merry Wives of Windsor_ – saw that at the Globe, some school trip or other – that was entertaining. No so much a fan of the tragedies, but I’ve seen a couple of those too.” He shrugged. “I just saw the poster in the bookshop window and figured it would be a fun way to spend the evening.”

Aziraphale looked like he was going to say something, then his expression changed. “Bookshop? I thought you said you didn’t read?”

Crowley felt his cheeks heat up. He hoped it wasn’t bright enough in here for his friend to tell. “Oh, well, ngg, ah – yeah, I mean I do _sometimes_ , just, you know, not very often.”

He searched around quickly for a change of subject, and spotted someone coming back from the foyer with a couple of small tubs in their hands. “Hey, do you want some ice cream? I think they’re selling those little interval pots downstairs, I could go grab you one?”

Aziraphale brightened up instantly. “Ooh, that sounds delightful! Do you know what flavours they have?”

Crowley wracked his brains. “Err, trying to remember if I looked on the way in. They usually have chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla. I think there was a honeycomb one or something too? Don’t quote me on that, though.”

“Honeycomb sounds delicious! I’ll be quite happy with chocolate too, though, if they don’t have any of those left.”

“Right.” Crowley nodded once, checked he still had his wallet on him, then turned and half-ran up the steps and down again to the foyer.

 _Bloody hell,_ he thought, his face still burning. _Why did you have to mention the bookshop? What’s that going to sound like if he asks? Oh yeah, I went specifically to find a book you mentioned in passing while I was drunk – no, don’t read anything into that._

The ‘honeycomb’, it turned out, was in fact salted caramel, and there was only one pot of it left when he got to the front of the queue. He shrugged mentally and bought it and a chocolate one, and accepted that he’d eat whichever Aziraphale didn’t want.

“Uh, sorry, it wasn’t honeycomb,” he began as he got back to their seats again.

Aziraphale looked up from a notebook he seemed to have been scribbling in. “No? That’s fine, anything works for me.”

Crowley held up the options. “Chocolate or salted caramel?”

“ _Ooh_!” Crowley was pretty sure he saw Aziraphale’s pupils dilate upon seeing the ice cream. “I don’t _know_!” He made it sound like the most difficult decision on Earth. “Which one do you prefer?”

Crowley shrugged. “I’m easy.”

Aziraphale tilted his head to one side, looking intently at his new friend as if trying to tell whether or not he was lying. Then he seemed to make a decision.

“Salted caramel, please, if you really don’t mind.”

Crowley shrugged again.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Oh, no. Don’t worry about it. Wasn’t much.”

Aziraphale suddenly looked genuinely shocked. _His face is so expressive,_ Crowley thought involuntarily.

“What? No, I should pay for mine, I know how expensive they can be.”

“Really doesn’t matter. My treat.”

Aziraphale looked for a second like he was going to argue further. Then he glanced again at the offered ice cream and gave in, tucking his notebook and pen under the seat before taking the tub and prying open its lid to uncover the spoon.

Crowley perched on the back of the currently-empty seat in front of Aziraphale’s, his legs sprawled into the aisle. He opened up his own ice cream, and then watched in fascination as his new friend tried the salted caramel.

 _Expressive_ didn’t quite cover it, really. _Obscene_ would be closer to the truth.

“Nice?” Crowley asked, almost jokingly.

Aziraphale didn’t seem to notice the tone. “Oh yes, it’s _divine_. Would you like to try some?”

“Um...”

There were a few things for Crowley to consider here. First, that he didn’t really especially love desserts in the same way Aziraphale clearly did. Crowley didn’t want to take away from this odd little numinous experience happening in front of him by reducing the amount of ice cream there was to fuel it. Secondly, Aziraphale’s gaze had flicked for a second to Crowley’s chocolate ice cream, and there was an obvious implication that an exchange of scoops could be had, which probably cleared up the issue of the first point. Thirdly, though, following on from both of the previous points, was the matter of shared spoons. Absolutely nothing to do with indirect kisses or any of that childish nonsense, but more to do with germs or whatever. Surely that should be a consideration?

Well, he was probably going to get Freshers’ Flu anyway. Sod it.

“Sure. Want some of mine, too?”

“Oh, yes _please_.”

They took little-plastic-theatre-spoon scoops of ice cream from each other’s pots. Crowley watched again as Aziraphale reacted just as enthusiastically to the chocolate as he had with the salted caramel.

 _Why is that so endearing?_ he couldn’t help wondering. _You barely know this guy. What is up with you?_

 _It’s just theatre ice cream, it’s not that incredible,_ a more cynical part of him added.

 _Exactly. Imagine what his reaction would be to_ actual _good food,_ another part pointed out.

Crowley quickly took himself out of that internal conversation, and focused intently on his own ice cream. He lost interest in it fairly quickly, and cast around for something to say.

“So, uh... what notes were you making there?”

“Oh, yes!” Aziraphale had somehow almost finished his dessert already, and carefully balanced it on the arm of his chair while he retrieved the notebook tucked under the seat. “I’m writing a review for the university newspaper. That’s how I heard about the performance.”

Crowley squinted at the page. Either Aziraphale had incredibly unreadable handwriting, or...

“You know shorthand?”

“Ah, yes.” Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably.

“That’s cool,” Crowley said. “They never taught us that at school. Would be useful in lectures.”

“They didn’t teach us, either. I learned it myself, online.” He looked downright embarrassed now, which wasn’t right.

“What? That’s amazing!”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yeah! You basically taught yourself a whole new language for fun, right? That’s awesome!”

Aziraphale brightened a little. “I suppose so. Though it’s not really a new language, just a different notation system.”

“Still smart.”

That pair of pale blue eyes studied Crowley for a moment. He tried to look as honest and genuine as possible. Aside from any unfortunate personal feelings, he liked Aziraphale, and wanted him to like him back. It would be nice if they could be friends. And for that, they needed to trust each other.

“Thank you, Crowley.”

“What for?”

“You’re a good person.”

Crowley didn’t have time to respond to that, because the person whose chair he was perched on had come back, and the next minute or so consisted of apologies and awkward shuffles to make room for all the returning audience members.

“Um, I should probably go back to my seat,” Crowley said awkwardly.

“I think there’s still a couple of minutes left,” Aziraphale said, a soft smile on his face. “You could sit here until the others come back?” He patted the seat next to him, where the older couple had been.

“If you don’t mind?”

“Not at all.”

Crowley sat, and Aziraphale noted down a couple more things in shorthand that he wanted to remind himself of later, explaining what he’d written to Crowley as he went. It was little things like ‘golf cart’ and ‘superman shirt’ and ‘white paint’, presumably all things not explicitly mentioned in Shakespeare’s original play and which Aziraphale thought would be interesting to bring up in his review.

“You mean they didn’t really dangle Beatrice from the ceiling in the Elizabethan era?”

“Not as far as I’m aware, no,” Aziraphale grinned. “Though there aren’t many stage directions in the written plays. You never know.”

The older couple came back for their seats, and the two students got up to let them past. Crowley glanced back up at his own seat, then hesitated.

“Um, excuse me?”

“Yes?”

“Was anyone sitting next to you before? On the other side, I mean?”

“No, there wasn’t. Would you like us to move up one?”

“That would be great, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course.”

The pair of them shuffled an extra seat onwards before sitting down, and Crowley nipped back up to his seat while they did so to grab his jacket. Then he and Aziraphale sat down again, side by side, ready for the rest of the play.

“Do you want the rest of my ice cream, by the way?” Crowley murmured as the house lights went down. “I’m not going to finish it.”

Aziraphale accepted, delighted.

* * *

The rest of the play was as wonderfully done as the first half had been, albeit more serious. The drama of the disgraced wedding was appropriately shocking, the interaction of Beatrice and Benedick in the aftermath perfectly complicated and fraught. Aziraphale made a few extra notes once he was done with the ice cream, both mostly he just sat in awe at the acting on display.

He almost forgot that Crowley was sat next to him, apart from when his laughter rang out at all the right moments and Aziraphale noticed how purely joyful it sounded. He happened to glance over during Benedick’s confession, and saw his new friend’s mouth open in a perfect little ‘o’. Aziraphale wondered whether his eyes were damp under those ever-present shades.

At the end, they stood together, and gave the bowing cast a standing ovation.

“That was brilliant!” Crowley said over the applause as the curtains closed for the last time. “Is this one always that good?”

“It’s one of my favourites,” Aziraphale admitted shyly. “I’ve seen it quite a few times.”

“Cool! Lucky you’re getting to review it then.”

They gathered their things, Crowley picking up the empty ice cream pots and thanking the couple next to them again for moving. Then they shuffled after the rest of the crowd towards the exit, caught in the bottleneck flow of bodies towards the doors, as always. Aziraphale tucked his notebook away in the pocket of his coat, and decided he’d start drafting his article on the bus ride home.

Oh, the bus. He should find an ATM and get some cash out...

“How are you getting back?”

They’d made it to the foyer, and the crowd was thinning as it dispersed out into the gathering dark. Crowley was shrugging on his leather jacket, and looking questioningly at Aziraphale from behind his sunglasses.

“The bus. I need to find a cash machine, actually.”

Crowley frowned. “I don’t think the buses around here take notes. Didn’t you bring enough change with you for both trips?”

“I did,” Aziraphale began, suddenly very interested with the coat in his arms. He mumbled the end of his sentence, hoping Crowley wouldn’t think he was an idiot.

“You _what_?”

“I gave it away!” He felt defensive and indignant, looking up and immediately away from the surprise on his new friend’s face. “There was a couple in a doorway on the way here, and I didn’t have much, but I figured they could use what I _did_ have more than me. I thought I could just find a hole in the wall somewhere nearby after the performance, but I suppose I could walk home instead. It’s not too far.”

“You really are an angel,” Crowley breathed. Aziraphale glanced at him sharply, but he’d already moved on. “Look, it’s got to be at least a half an hour walk. Let me give you a lift.”

“You drive?”

“Oh, yeah. Family car. I’ve been in town most of the day, so it’s not nearby, but it’ll still be quicker than walking back.”

“Well then... yes, please. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all, angel. I’m going the same way as you, after all.”

Aziraphale nodded, pulling on his coat as Crowley motioned towards the doors. The leather-jacketed redhead moved ahead, swaying his hips as he walked, in what could only really be called a saunter.

He didn’t look at all like the sort of person that impulsively went to Shakespeare plays alone. He wore all black, had a snake on his face, and still had his sunglasses on at night – granted, the latter was for a medical condition, but it certainly matched the rest of his aesthetic. He looked more like the sort of person that rode a motorcycle than anything else, maybe in one of those biker gangs you heard about. He looked like the sort of student that got drunk on weekends, never did any work, and wouldn’t touch a book with a barge pole. Well, the drinking was partly true, at least, and Crowley hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic when discussing his degree, but he _had_ been into a bookshop earlier. He might present himself as ‘not a reader’, but really he was just someone who _pretended_ not to read, probably to seem cool. Why Crowley would think that would work to make him look cool to Aziraphale, or why he would _want_ to seem cool to Aziraphale, he couldn’t fathom. But he clearly liked spending time with him – he’d moved seats to sit together, after all.

Aziraphale stared after Crowley, a frown creasing his forehead.

 _Angel._ What did that mean?

Crowley paused at the exit, holding the door open for a couple of people until Aziraphale caught up, then holding it open for him too. Then he led the way back through town, towards wherever he’d parked his car. He talked the whole way.

“...which was amazing, I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that on stage before. Considering the plays are so old, I’m genuinely impressed people keep coming up with new interpretations of them.” Crowley trailed off, then stopped walking.

“You okay, Aziraphale?”

“Hmm? Oh yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

“You’re just not saying much.”

_He noticed. He... listened._

Aziraphale had mentioned he didn’t like long silences yesterday – was it really only yesterday? – and Crowley had noticed that Aziraphale wasn’t the one filling the silence now. _Hmm._

“I was just... thinking.” He hesitated, making to say something a couple of times before finally forcing the words out. “Why did you call me ‘angel’ earlier?”

“Oh.” Crowley looked suddenly embarrassed. “It was a stupid thing – Beez referred to Gabriel and your lot as ‘angels’ the other day – but in, like, a derogatory way. My friends back home used to say it too, sometimes. Like, meaning ‘nerdy’ or ‘goody-two-shoes’, I guess.”

“Ah, right.”

“I just... thought it was funny. Because you actually _did_ do something that might be considered angelic, you know?”

“Well, I don’t know about _angelic_. That seems pretty low-level Good for a being of Heaven, right?” He tried to give jokey smile.

“S’pose. Heaven always struck me as being a bit ‘Good in name only’, though.” Crowley caught Aziraphale’s confused expression and shrugged. “You know, the Flood and all that. Seemed a bit excessive, is all.”

“Ah.”

There was a short silence as the pair of them hovered there. Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure what to say, but he also didn’t know where they were going, so couldn’t really motion for them to head onwards. The best thing to do would be for him to make a joke or change the subject, but he was now at a complete loss in that regard.

Then he remembered what Gabriel had been yelling about to Michael, on the night of the party.

“If it helps, I think my flatmates are pretty sure your lot are demons, what with all the parties and loud music and everything. So us being angels only seems fair.”

“Parties _plural_?” Crowley asked, raising an eyebrow. “Not unless I’ve somehow slept through more.” He grinned lopsidedly. “That’s funny, though. You’re the angels, we’re the demons. Hell flat and Heaven flat. Beez’d probably like that.”

Aziraphale smiled back. “Well, there you are then. _Foul fiend._ ”

Crowley laughed at that, a peal of genuine amusement through the quiet night. _That’s nice,_ Aziraphale thought distantly, vaguely. _I like that._

“Anyway,” Crowley said, still with that lopsided grin. “Seems to me you fit ‘angel’ better than the rest of your flat. Maybe that’s your nickname now.” He gave a half shrug and a wonky smile, and Aziraphale assumed it would have been accompanied by a wink if it weren’t for those dark lenses.

“Aziraphale Princip, Guardian Angel to university students everywhere,” he said sarcastically.

“Hmm, Princip,” Crowley said thoughtfully. “It’s practically ready-made.” He puffed his chest out and put on a grand voice, like he was presenting some sort of TV competition. “The Principality Aziraphale, patron saint of journalists and English students, patron of modern reimaginings of Shakespeare plays.”

Now it was Aziraphale’s turn to laugh. “Thanks. You’ve somehow managed to make me sound like even more of a nerd than I already am.”

“You’re welcome, angel.” Crowley’s smile was more subdued now. Aziraphale realised he was testing the waters, checking if everything was okay.

He smiled back. “I like it. Definitely works, coming from a demon like you.”

Crowley’s mouth twisted into another kind of grin, one trying its hardest not to dissolve into laughter. The ‘demon’ gestured sideways, and only then did Aziraphale realise they were stood by the pedestrian entrance to a multi-storey carpark. “Right this way.”

“After you.”

They went inside, mounting the stairs almost to the top floor, and then Crowley led the way into the almost-empty carpark, towards a frankly stunning-looking vehicle.

“Okay, I know nothing about cars,” Aziraphale said, eyes wide. “But I know that this one is _amazing_. It must be really old! It’s in incredible condition... Wait, it’s not really yours, is it? It can’t be.”

“No, it is,” Crowley said. He unlocked it and climbed in, starting the engine and flicking on the headlights to prove his point. “See? Just got lucky in the family lottery, you know.”

Aziraphale had no idea whether he just meant that generally, or whether there really had been some sort of raffle of inheritance at some point, and Crowley had picked the ticket that the car was numbered with. He didn’t really feel that he knew Crowley well enough to ask, though, so instead he climbed cautiously into the passenger seat, and then immediately exclaimed when he couldn’t find a seatbelt.

“Oh, yeah. Um, technically UK law doesn’t require cars that were made before a certain date to have them installed, so... There was a whole Thing about it. In my family, I mean. Whether it was better to ‘preserve the original state of the car’ or make it safer or whatever. The argument didn’t get resolved before I left for uni, and I haven’t looked into getting it done myself yet.”

Aziraphale nodded, tight lipped, and felt around the edges of the seat for where had best grip. There weren’t even any ceiling handles.

“Also, you should know that the tape player’s stuck. Which, yeah, not original either, but whatever. So if you want music, it’s Queen or nothing, I’m afraid.”

“Right.” Aziraphale didn’t really have an opinion on Queen. It was music that he vaguely knew – _everyone_ vaguely knew Queen, it was basically an inborn trait at this point – but he wouldn’t choose to listen to it, and he wasn’t actually 100% sure he could name any of their songs except ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ off the top of his head. He was fairly confident he’d recognise a few of them, though.

He was right. As Crowley pulled out of the carpark, the middle section of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ began, and Aziraphale at least knew the chorus to that one.

“Off we go, then! Bet you’re glad you’re not walking now.”

It might have been the darkness of the night, the newness of the city, the complete lack of any safety features, the lack of any real knowledge of who the driver was, or simply the speed at which that driver was choosing to move through the streets, but Aziraphale wasn’t entirely sure he could answer that indirect question in the affirmative. He made a little noncommittal noise that suddenly veered into terrified squeak as Crowley swerved around a sharp corner.

“You alright there?”

“Not really,” Aziraphale said, in the gap as the song came to an end. “It’s a little fast?”

“Oh, sorry.” Crowley dropped to what Aziraphale assumed was only ten miles faster than the speed limit. “I keep forgetting to check that.”

Aziraphale couldn’t do much else but nod and grip tighter to his seat. He kept his eyes fixed on the road, and actually _prayed_ they’d both make it back safely.

He didn’t recognise the next song that came on, but thought privately it was rather apt when the lead singer began calling out ‘Save Me’ repeatedly.

They did make it back safely, and _much_ faster than Aziraphale had expected when he’d accepted the lift. He thanked Crowley, stumbling up the stairs to their flats together, but he also informed him that he would rather _not_ do that again any time soon, if it was all the same to him. The play was good though, and he was glad that Crowley had enjoyed it.

Crowley smirked, wished him goodnight, and disappeared into his flat. Not before calling Aziraphale ‘angel’ again, though.

Funny. Aziraphale was really starting to like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4 Crowley had had more than one bad experience with coffee from Greggs, Starbucks, Pret, and various other chains, and now only ever bought coffee from Costa to save himself the disappointment. His choice today therefore had nothing to do with the fact that Costa were currently doing a promotion on ‘unicorn coffee’. [return to text]
> 
> **Other notes:**
> 
> You probably guessed which book Crowley bought at the bookshop, but in case you don’t know what I’m going on about with the inexplicable parrot on the cover, [here’s a link for you](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Paradise-Lost-Penguin-Classics-Milton/dp/0140424393).
> 
> The modern details of the play all come from the version of _Much Ado_ that starred David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and is 100% worth a watch (whether you've seen it before or not - I laugh every time).  
> EDIT: the link I originally posted here is no longer available, but if you want to pay to watch this adaptation, you can do so [here](https://www.digitaltheatre.com/consumer/production/much-ado-about-nothing).
> 
> Btw, I promised you at least 16k of this fic before the month was out, and I've made it to over 20k! Very pleased with that. There's plenty more coming (I'm currently estimating 18 chapters just for first year, which is... a thing), and I'll try to be fairly regular with posting, but I make no promises regarding any sort of update schedule from here on out. I'll post as I write, and I'm currently halfway through Chapter 5. We'll see what happens.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	5. Let the World Come at You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter title from _The Amazing Devil_ 's lyrics, as they continue to be a major part of the soundtrack to writing this fic. This line is from ['Love Run'](https://genius.com/The-amazing-devil-love-run-intro-lyrics) (and also ['Not Yet/Love Run (reprise)'](https://genius.com/The-amazing-devil-not-yet-love-run-reprise-lyrics)), and the full line is "O, let the world come at you, love".
> 
> Warning in this chapter for discussion of exercise, weight, and fitness levels. Aziraphale is the focus of this discussion, but Crowley is nothing but positive towards Aziraphale - it's just that Gabriel is The Worst.  
> Also warning for mention of excessive alcohol use right at the end.
> 
> Massive thanks to [madeofmydreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeofmydreams/) for beta-ing part of this chapter!
> 
> Also massive thank you to [lordvoldemortsnipple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordvoldemortsnipple/) for css help to incorporate texting into this chapter. Definitely recommend checking [this link](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24838792/chapters/60084040) out if you need help with that.

On Monday uni started in earnest, and it was both intense and incredibly freeing at the same time.

Everyone had a regular timetable of lectures and seminars and tutorials and labs and whatever else they had to do to pass. But there were gaps in those timetables, too; free hours in the middle of the day that were supposed to be used for studying, or part-time work, or perhaps going to the gym. Suddenly, life became about matching up those free periods with other people, organising ‘group study sessions’ that always dissolved into gossip, scheduling two-hour lunches to complain about the work they were procrastinating from, and entirely building friendship groups around who was available when.

There were also regular meetings for the various student societies, and a million and one things happening across campus and in the city every evening, so there was no shortage of things to do. Students were quickly introduced to the rotation of club nights: Pandæmonium on Mondays, Cloud 9 on Tuesdays, Eden on Wednesdays, 9th Circle on Thursdays, The Pearly Gates on Fridays. Weekends were for sleeping until midday, messing around in town, stocking up on chocolate and vodka, and having house parties until the early hours. Or, if you were a good little student, reading the set texts and writing your essays.

Aside from all that, there were the demands of independent living – shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry – which were arising more rapidly than expected. Dirty plates and pans and cutlery piled up fast, and so flat tensions came out quickly. There were issues like _who’s buying the next lot of loo roll? hand soap? kitchen roll? bin bags?_ Speaking of, _whose turn is it to take the bins out?_ Rotas were written and ignored and ripped up. Post-its became the site of passive-aggression on all matters. Milk was labelled in the fridge with threats as well as names.

By the end of the week – only the second week of term, only the second week of independence and freedom and the crushing pressure of far too many things to do – the first-year students were already developing the coping mechanisms that would last them for the rest of their academic lives. For some, this was a colour-coded timetable detailing every hour of every day, blown up onto the largest paper the library printer would let them use and pinned to their bedroom walls. For others, this was comfort food, or familiar books, or cuddly toys, or an ever-present tub of ice cream and/or bottle of something strong, ready for emergencies. For Gabriel, it seemed to be gym equipment.

* * *

It was the shouting that brought Crowley out of the flat. It hadn’t woken him up, as such – he’d been awake for a few hours, staring at his phone and avoiding his responsibilities – but it had dragged him out of bed, into clothes, and out the door to see what was going on. He was greeted by the sight of an unimpressed-looking woman with her arms folded, leaning against the doorway of the flat opposite. There was an awful lot of noise coming from the stairwell.

“Wha’s going on?” Crowley asked groggily, adjusting his sunglasses against the morning light and running a hand through his hair to tame it into some sort of shape.

“Gabriel’s got a new toy,” the woman – _Michael? Was that her name?_ – said flatly.

Crowley moved towards the stairs and peered down.

Rounding the corner from the floor below was a very large white box with stereotypically-attractive people wearing sports clothes printed on the sides. Crowley couldn’t see who was carrying it – and it was only one person, by the looks of it, because there was no one holding the visible end – but he could figure out what was going on from the shouting of a frustrated American voice.

“I said left, Aziraphale, _left_! No, you need to lift the far end up a step so it’ll fit around the corner – there, now move this way more, and – _no_ , not like _that_ –”

“Is he helping _at all_?” Crowley asked, one eyebrow raised. “Sounds like a lot of useless chaos to me.”

“Not particularly,” Michael said, sounding bored. “Maybe if he _listened_ to what Gabriel was saying, but...” She shrugged.

Crowley frowned. “No, I meant...”

He looked for a second between the person in the doorway doing nothing and the unwieldy box being carried by just one person up the stairs, and then he shook his head. _Seriously? Fucking dickheads, the lot of them._

There wasn’t much point calling ahead that he was coming down, with all the racket that Gabriel was making, but when he reached the end of the box – which had now somehow been twisted sideways and was taking up most of the staircase – he tapped on it, and Aziraphale’s face popped up from where it had been hidden at the other end.

“Oh, hello Crowley! Ah, terribly sorry, having a bit of trouble here so you may have to wait to get out.”

“Nah, I’m here to help, angel. Can you flip it upright again? I’ll grab this end...”

Gabriel seemed to realise he wasn’t being paid attention to anymore, and moved close enough towards Aziraphale to be able to peer up the stairs at Crowley. “Sorry!” he said brightly, not sounding it at all. “This one’s being a bit of trouble. Shouldn’t take too long!”

Considering what Michael had said upstairs, Crowley wasn’t sure whether ‘this one’ referred to the box or to Aziraphale. He ignored that thought, though, and put his hands on the box.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help!” he called cheerily. Gabriel’s face lost a little of its false glee, but Crowley pretended not to notice. “That’s it, Aziraphale – hold it there a sec, and I’ll lift from this end.”

He bent down – _at the knees, not the back_ , he could practically _hear_ his old PE teacher in his head – and gripped the base of his end of the box either side, and then lifted. Well, tried to lift. Tried and utterly failed to lift. _Wow_ , that box weighed a _tonne_.

“It’s a little heavy, sorry,” said Aziraphale, who was presumably still holding most of the weight of it, judging by the angle it was at on the stairs. “I can tilt it up a bit further, if that would help?”

The box shifted as he spoke, and then Crowley’s end was in the air, like it was light as anything. He stared for a second at the levitating package, then regathered his wits and grabbed the end. “Yeah, how about I guide it from this end, and you just push, or whatever?”

“Sounds good,” Aziraphale’s voice said, muffled slightly behind the box now, but with no signs of strain in it.

_You really are full of surprises, aren’t you, angel?_

It didn’t actually take that long with both of them doing it. Crowley had the advantage of being higher on the stairs and able to see where they were going, and all Aziraphale had to do was follow the guidance of Crowley’s words and hands. In no time the box was flat on the floor in the doorway to the angels’ flat, taking the place of the disgruntled Michael.

“Wonderful! Well, I’ll call that a job well done,” Aziraphale said, brushing his hands together in a demonstrative gesture. Gabriel scowled behind him. “Thank you for your help, Crowley.”

“No problem,” he said, grinning in what he hoped was a perfect balance of sincerity towards Aziraphale and wolfish disgust towards Gabriel and Michael. “I’m sure you’ll manage to get it into the flat yourself now, Gabe. Just the corners that were the issue.”

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said. “It was more of an unwieldy size than anything else. Should be a nice straight line to your room now.”

Gabriel’s mouth was a firm line. “Of course,” he said tightly. “And it’s Gabriel. Not Gabe.”

“Oh, _sorry_ , mate,” Crowley said, leaning heavily into the apology. He turned to Aziraphale and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Want to pop in for a sec? I was just about to grab lunch.”

Aziraphale beamed, and accepted immediately. Crowley held the door open for him, and didn’t even glance at the other two as they left. As soon as the door was shut, though, he peered through the little spy-hole and watched, pleased, as Gabriel began to strain at the heavy box, struggling to slide it across the floor and further into the flat.

“Are you alright, Crowley?”

“Yeah, just checking to see if they’re managing it okay on their own.” He turned to smirk at Aziraphale, then paused. “That was one heavy box, angel. Why wasn’t Gabriel carrying it with you? Or Michael, for that matter?”

“Oh, ah...” Aziraphale was frowning, as if unsure what Crowley was getting at. “Gabriel’s sprained his wrist a little – it’s not bad, but he didn’t want to risk making it worse. And Michael wasn’t there when we first went down to collect it – she must have only just realised what was happening.”

“Riiight,” Crowley said, dragging out the vowel a little sceptically. He paused for a second, wondering whether to push the matter further, then decided to let it drop for the time being.

Instead, he gestured further into the flat. “Do you want to hang out in my room, or brave the kitchen? I don’t think Beez is up yet, but no idea about the others.”

“Um, whichever,” Aziraphale said hesitantly, eyes darting around uncomfortably.

“Okay,” Crowley said easily, pretending he hadn’t noticed. “Let’s go for the kitchen then. You can actually get a look at it without a million people in there, this time. Not that I can guarantee it’ll be any tidier.” He winked, before realising the sunglasses meant there was no way that Aziraphale had seen that. He shrugged instead, which didn’t convey quite the same meaning.

_Ugh, you’re ridiculous. Just go._

Crowley sped off down the corridor, attempting to use the burst of energy to smother his awkwardness, and hoping Aziraphale hadn’t noticed.

* * *

“Wait wait wait wait wait,” Crowley said, trying not to laugh. “You actually tried to go _jogging_ with _Gabriel_?”

They’d just finished lunch and were sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, plates discarded. Crowley had thrown together some pasta and pesto, and added in the rest of the mushrooms he’d cut up for using in omelettes a day or two before. The meal had gone down a treat, and they had yet to be interrupted by any of the demon flatmates.

Aziraphale’s hand reached for the opposite sleeve again, and Crowley tried not to wince. “Well, yes. He did invite me. I thought it would be a good idea.”

“Okay, but there’s a difference between taking up a new hobby or form of exercise, and _taking it up with Gabriel_. I bet he didn’t even _try_ to go at your pace.”

“Well, no. But that’s not the point, is it? I was joining in with _his_ routine, he shouldn’t have to wait for me.”

Crowley gaped a little, floundering on how best to respond to that. “But _he_ invited _you_.”

“Yes. Which makes it my responsibility to impose as little on his routine as possible. It’s not _his_ fault if I can’t keep up.”

“No, angel, _no_.” How was Aziraphale not getting this? “If he invites you along to an activity that he does regularly and is therefore good at, and he knows you’re new to this, it’s _his_ responsibility to keep it at a pace you can manage. You don’t just throw someone in at the deep end and see how it goes, you gradually build up to something big. It’s like learning anything new – you start with the building blocks.”

Aziraphale didn’t reply, but his arms shifted to hug his own soft middle. He wasn’t looking at his friend anymore, instead contemplating the empty pasta bowls and chewing his bottom lip. Crowley stared. _Oh, you angel. Who hurt you?_

“I mean, I know _I_ can’t run to save my life,” Crowley continued flippantly, trying desperately to engage Aziraphale in the conversation again. “And if the guy who dragged me out running didn’t try to help me _learn_ , of course it wouldn’t go well. And I’d probably swear at him. A lot.”

“You’d do better than me, though. I was pathetic.”

Crowley felt angry all of a sudden – not _at_ Aziraphale, just on his behalf. He allowed his voice to come out a little firmer, a little more seriously. “What makes you say that?”

Aziraphale looked up at his tone, then shrugged and gestured loosely between them. “Well, look at you. You’re much healthier than I am.”

Crowley curled a fist in his lap to ground himself and remind him not to yell. He took a deep breath.

“Right, first of all, you definitely can’t tell how _healthy_ someone is just by looking, okay? You just can’t. Whatever you’re trying to imply about relative _fitness_ also doesn’t work – I’m skinny as a twig, and that means I have zero muscle, too. Plus I’m lazy as shit. I can barely run ten metres without getting out of breath. Okay? You have no reason to think I’d be any better at it than you. In fact, I’ll bet you anything that you did better on your jog with Gabriel than I’d be able to do. How far did you make it?”

“Only a couple of miles or so. Gabriel was planning on doing at least five, I think, but I had to stop before we were even halfway.”

Crowley’s eyes widened. “Two miles? You made it _two miles_?” He scrambled for his phone and punched in the numbers, pretty sure he was right. He was. “Angel, that’s over three _kilometres_! Bloody Hell, there’s no way I’d even make it to _one_!”

Aziraphale looked genuinely confused. That little spark of anger inside Crowley flared as he imagined what Gabriel might have said when Aziraphale had had to stop.

“Angel,” he began, trying to sound calm and comforting. “Please believe me when I say this: no matter what you’ve been told, there is very little correlation between size or shape and fitness. You managed to run _two miles_ when you’ve never jogged before – that’s impressive. You also lifted a really, _really_ heavy box earlier without breaking a sweat, and I couldn’t even lift half of it when you were already carrying it. You _are_ fit, whether you ‘look like it’ or not.” He used air quotes for that bit, emphasising the ridiculousness of assessing strength or stamina through visuals alone.

“And, angel,” he continued, hoping he wasn’t about to go too far. “It’s okay to like food. It really is. You don’t have to feel guilty about eating dessert, or skip dinner so you can have snacks in the cinema, or whatever other bullshit people might say.”

Aziraphale hugged his stomach tighter for a second. Then he looked up and gave a soft half-smile.

“Thank you, Crowley.”

He smiled back, trying for genuine. Then everything felt a little intense, and he tried to back out into casual, jokey territory again.

“Anyway, like I said. Jogging is a skill like any other. If you’ve never done it, of course you’re not going to be as good at it as someone who does it all the time. Even if you’re good at similar things, it takes practice. There’s a reason Usain Bolt and Mo Farah never compete in the same event.”

Aziraphale looked up quizzically. Crowley raised an eyebrow.

“You do know who they are, right? Olympic runners?”

Aziraphale squinted as if trying to remember.

“Fastest man in the world? Team GB marathon runner?”

Still nothing.

Crowley rolled his eyes and did the poses – the Lightning Bolt, the Mobot. Aziraphale _giggled_.

“Oh yes, I remember now.”

It was Crowley’s turn to squint. “Did you just pretend not to know so I’d make a fool of myself?”

A little bit of pink appeared in Aziraphale’s cheeks. “No...”

“You bastard!” Crowley smiled in spite of himself, and marvelled at the sight of Aziraphale laughing.

“Oh, but you do it so _well_ , my dear fellow!”

_Bloody Hell. Does he even realise –?_

“ _Anyway!_ ” They were getting off track, and Crowley tried to distract both of them from the rising blush in his own cheeks. “Point is, Gabriel’s a dick for not slowing down for you. _And_ he’s a dick for not properly helping you with the box earlier. He’s just an all-round dick. So don’t try so hard with him.”

Aziraphale gave him a look. “He’s my flatmate, Crowley. I do have to _try_.”

“You don’t have to be _friends_ with him, though. You’re just sharing a living space, you don’t have to be besties.” He remembered Michael’s earlier derision. “That goes for the rest of them, too.”

“Oh, the others are perfectly fine. Well, except Sandalphon. He’s a little... well, creepy, to be honest. That feels a bit mean to say, but he’s just uncomfortable to be around.” Aziraphale shrugged off any further description of that particular thought. “I tried to talk to him about TV shows the other night, but we didn’t really have any in common.”

“Right.” _Should I be concerned?_

“But the others are more than civil. I exchange pleasantries with Michael all the time, and she seems nice enough, even if we’re very different people.”

Crowley bit his tongue to avoid saying anything to that. _I should probably be concerned, shouldn’t I?_ He shifted the conversation instead. “What about the other one? Uriel, is it?”

“They’re nice enough. A little standoffish, but they seem to be that way to everyone. They’re studying History, which I thought might be a good starting point for conversation, but, well...” He trailed off.

Crowley made an encouraging noise.

Aziraphale waved a hand. “I tried to talk about Shakespearean England with them – after we saw _Much Ado_ , you know, I thought that might be something interesting the two of us could discuss together – but apparently they care more about _modern_ history. The Victorians and onwards, really.” He shifted the key of his voice slightly, and Crowley could tell he was quoting exactly: “You know, the stuff that _really_ matters.”

_Right, I should definitely be concerned._

“ _Fuck_ that,” Crowley said, with feeling. “Holy shit, angel, your flatmates _suck_.”

Aziraphale looked a little offended on their behalf.

“No, seriously.” Crowley wasn’t going to let this go. “They’re treating you like shit. Making you do things for them without help, not accommodating you, refusing to engage when you try to talk about mutually-interesting topics – it sounds like you’re trying really hard to be friends with them, and they’re just not interested.”

“Well, I don’t think that... I mean, it’s not _their_ fault that we don’t have the same areas of interest...”

“No, but it is their fault if you come away from the conversation feeling inadequate.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He did that a few more times, then seemed to decide not to say anything at all.

Crowley sighed. “Look, I’m not telling you to stop talking to them entirely or anything. But just... you don’t _have_ to be friends with them. You’ve got course-mates – that bloke who lives downstairs? – and societies and stuff, too, right? Find people who like the same stuff as you, or at least treat you with respect, and go from there.”

He paused for breath, and realised he’d probably gone too far again. _Back to safe ground, come on, Crowley. Course-mates, societies, Much Ado – ah, bingo._

“Did they like your review, by the way?”

Aziraphale smiled brightly, and Crowley was relieved to see he was no longer hugging his own waist.

“Oh, yes! I got a lovely email back from Theresa with hardly any corrections to make. It’s up on the website now, if you wanted to have a look at it?”

“Yeah, I, um...” _Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic. Don’t seem too intense. Don’t seem creepy. Just be cool._ “I saw it the other day, actually.”

“You did?”

“Mmm, yeah. Was good.”

“Oh, _thank_ you!”

_How on Earth do you make your eyes sparkle like that? Why do you always sound so incredibly grateful at the smallest of things? How are you so cute?_

“Liked the bit about the paint. You made it sound just as funny as it was to watch it.”

Aziraphale blushed. “Oh, well. I’m glad it came across.”

“You gonna keep writing for them?”

“Yes, of course! It’s good fun, and certainly good practice.” Aziraphale frowned then, and glanced upwards towards the clock. “Speaking of which, I’ve actually got some work I was supposed to be getting on with today, so I should probably head back soon.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

Aziraphale stood, and Crowley followed suit.

“Thank you ever so much for lunch, it was delicious.”

“Nothing special, angel. Glad you liked it, though.”

“I should return the favour some time. And, ah... do I have your number? I got WhatsApp recently – and I made a Facebook this week! Apparently that’s where they organise most of the events for the English Society and the student newspaper. So I suppose you could contact me on there, if you needed to.”

_How is he so cute? Okay, act casual, act casual, act casual._

“Uh, yeah, sure – I mean, no, I don’t have your number, but yes, I could find you on Facebook if you want. I’ll send you a friend request. Can’t be that many ‘Aziraphale Princip’s out there, can there?”

“No, surprisingly few,” Aziraphale grinned. “Let me know if you want to come over for food sometime, anyway. Although, do let me know in advance – I’m still relatively new to cooking, I’m afraid, so I may need some preparation.”

“Sure, no problem. And if it does all go to Hell, we could always order pizza.”

“True.” Aziraphale headed for the door, and Crowley followed behind. “Thank you again for the pasta, and for helping with the box. I’ll see you soon.”

“Yep. See ya.”

Crowley waited until Aziraphale was safely into the flat opposite before giving a little wave and shutting his own front door. He paused for the count of a full minute, then opened the Facebook app and quickly found Aziraphale’s new, very sparse-looking profile. He sent the request.

_Don’t think about it. Stop it. You’re being ridiculous. He wouldn't be interested. Just shut up and be a decent human being, would you? You’ve made a friend. Stop wishing for it to be anything else._

He headed back to the kitchen to do the washing up. It didn’t take long, and he was still overthinking that last bit of conversation when his phone buzzed while he was drying his hands.

> _Aziraphale Princip has accepted your friend request._

Cool. Good. Nice. Phew. _Breathe._

He headed back to his room, and the phone buzzed again just as the door swung shut behind him. It was a message from Aziraphale. Another came through even as Crowley was processing the meaning behind the string of digits.

**Aziraphale:** That’s my phone number.

**Aziraphale:** In case you prefer WhatsApp or texting to Facebook Messenger.

Crowley stared at the messages for a moment. Then he quickly messaged back:

**Crowley:** Cool, thanks angel.

**Crowley:** Good luck with your work.

**Aziraphale:** Thank you!

He saved Aziraphale’s mobile number to his contacts, and spent far too long finding the right little angel emoji to put next to the name. Then he flopped down onto the bed, and grabbed _Paradise Lost_ from where it had been abandoned on the floor last night.

* * *

“Oi, Crowley.”

“Mmm-hmm?”

“We’re getting plastered tonight. You in?”

Crowley’s eyes flicked to the clock on the wall, and he hoped the motion wasn’t visible behind his glasses.

“It’s Sunday night. Isn’t town for the locals tonight?”

“We mean _here_ ,” Beez said with an eye-roll. “Dagon grabbed some booze earlier. You up for it?”

Sunday night. He had a 9am lecture tomorrow. It was already 9pm.

It was a toss-up, then. Skip a lecture, hang out with new mates. Or have the whole flat think you’re boring, but not miss anything from uni. _Heads or tails._

Crowley eyed the crowd of his flatmates on the sofa. Hastur and Ligur were looking at him with what could be easily mistaken for death-stares. Dagon was showing far too many teeth. And Beez was simply sat there, eyebrows raised in question.

“Yeah, course. What’re you drinking?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, Crowley doesn’t see the irony in him advising Aziraphale to not try too hard with his flatmates, then turning around and missing lectures because he wants his own flatmates to think he’s cool. Oh dear.


	6. A Beautiful Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title is from _Queen_ 's song ['It's a Beautiful Day'](https://genius.com/Queen-its-a-beautiful-day-lyrics) because for some reason when I type 'queen birthday song lyrics' into Google, that's what comes up. Not sure why.
> 
> Warning that this chapter contains references to alcohol use, some mild Facebook stalking, and internal speculation as to someone else's sexuality - just thought I'd give people a heads-up on that, in case it was squicky for anyone.
> 
> This one is also fairly heavy on the texting - if possible, I recommend reading using the work skin so you can see it all laid out nicely, but it has been made accessible if you need to read it without the skin or if you choose to download it. Please do let me know if you encounter any issues with either format, btw!

> 🎂 Today is Anthony J. Crowley’s birthday.

Aziraphale looked at the notification for a moment, before clicking it curiously.

The phone opened up the Facebook app and landed on a page with Crowley’s name and profile picture over a little text box requesting that Aziraphale ‘write on his timeline’.

_Hmm._

He went to tap in the little text box to write a message, then paused. _What does that mean, ‘write on his timeline’?_

Instead, he clicked on Crowley’s name, which took him to his new friend’s profile.

Crowley stared back at him from the screen, his serious I-am-really-cool expression tying in nicely with the sunglasses and black leather jacket he was wearing in the photo. Behind and above him, a forest of greenery decorated the top of the page, looking like some kind of lush plant Paradise.

Aziraphale scrolled down until he found the timeline itself. A header declared that ‘2 friends posted on Anthony’s timeline for his birthday’, and then those two messages were displayed underneath: simple ‘happy birthday’ messages with no personalisation or detail. Aziraphale didn’t recognise either of the names.

_Hmm._

The problem with having had very little experience with social media – and practically none at all where the other users actually knew who you were – was that Aziraphale had no idea about the social etiquette of this particular situation.

The easy thing would be to just do as these two other people had, as Facebook seemed to expect him to. Just a simple ‘Happy Birthday!’ on Crowley’s timeline, and leave it at that. Social interaction accomplished. Tick.

But that seemed so... impersonal, somehow. Those two little statements, so limited and formal and dull. He’d want to personalise the message somehow, but then that was getting into untested territory – if no one else was writing anything personal, his post would stick out like a sore thumb. Perhaps it would draw the attention of other users. Perhaps it would be misconstrued. Perhaps it would embarrass Crowley.

No, then. No posting on any timelines.

But that didn’t seem right, either. He shouldn’t just _ignore_ this interesting coincidence.

There was always the chance that Crowley would be the one to initiate the interaction. Perhaps later in the day he would post on _Aziraphale’s_ timeline, and then the decision would be out of his hands entirely. Sorted.

On the other hand, that might not happen at all. Aziraphale wasn’t all that sure Crowley used Facebook overmuch. He scrolled down further.

The new profile picture had only been added a couple of weeks ago, but before that, Crowley hadn’t posted in months. There was no mention of his acceptance into university, no text posts of any kind. In fact, Crowley himself hadn’t posted anything since just after this time last year – close-up photographs of his tattoo, fresh and new. Between then and now, the only posts were things other people had tagged him in – group photos, mostly, of Crowley with a gang of similarly cool-looking people his age.

Aziraphale found himself flicking through these photos, wondering who the other people were. Friends from home, of course – those mates who had encouraged the tattoo, who didn’t seem to have ever talked with Crowley about simple personal things, who thought of people like Aziraphale in a derogatory way. _’Angel’._ Crowley didn’t say it like an insult. But that was where it had originated.

He paused on the most recent group photo. The post was titled ‘Last night out with the lads before uni!’ and was dated a couple of weeks before Aziraphale had met the redhead in the picture.

Crowley was stood with four other guys, all wearing typical ‘cool’ clothes and with their hair styled in what even Aziraphale recognised as the latest fashion. They were the most common faces seen in all the other photos, and the tags named them as Luke, Mammon, Baph, and Levi. The photo was clearly taken late at night in someone’s garden – or perhaps a park – judging from the bit of leafy greenery visible to one side at the back. Everyone in the photo appeared to be holding a drink of some kind, and they were all grinning widely, in the unrestrained way people often did when there was a little alcohol in their systems.

Aziraphale paused a little, looking at Crowley. Unlike the others, he wasn’t looking at the camera. Or at least, he wasn’t facing towards it – it was quite possible that his eyes were directed at the photographer behind his ever-present sunglasses, but his face was turned away slightly. He was laughing, looking happy – genuinely _happy_ – and he was staring at the one tagged as Luke.

 _Luke._ Crowley had mentioned his name, hadn’t he? Possibly.

Aziraphale didn’t want to infer too much from a simple photo on Facebook, but... it gave him pause for thought, at least. Not that he hadn’t already considered that possibility. And ‘evidence’ was certainly a stretch. But it was something to consider.

Anyway. Back to the matter at hand.

Crowley hadn’t posted on Facebook in months. He was unlikely to initiate this conversation. Posting directly to his timeline seemed somehow wrong. Which only really left messaging him directly.

That was a whole new level of stress. What on Earth would the etiquette be for private conversations? Plenty of room for a more personal message there, but would it be too much? _Too_ personal? And perhaps even more potential for something to be misconstrued...

_Stop it, Aziraphale. Pull yourself together. It’s not a big deal. Just wish him a happy birthday._

He pulled up the Messenger app. Nothing had been sent since his last ‘thank you’ message to Crowley for wishing him well with his work. How on Earth should he write this?

The agonising only lasted a few minutes longer. He finally settled on a simple-enough phrasing, and hit send.

**Aziraphale:** Happy Birthday, Crowley! Hope you have a lovely day. 😊

A message from Crowley came back almost immediately.

**Crowley:** Thanks angel. Happy Birthday to you too!

**Crowley:** Didn’t know we had the same birthday.

Aziraphale relaxed a little. Speaking over text wasn’t all that different to speaking in real life.

**Aziraphale:** Neither did I!

He didn’t know what else to add. It would be up to Crowley to continue the conversation.

**Crowley:** So what are you planning on doing to celebrate?

**Aziraphale:** Oh, nothing much. I thought I might bake a cake, but it seemed like rather a big challenge this early on in my culinary career. I’ll probably pop out later and settle for shop-bought.

**Aziraphale:** What about you?

**Crowley:** Beez and the others are dragging me out

**Crowley:** Which will either be a laugh or awful

**Crowley:** You could probs come too, if you wanted.

**Crowley:** No pressure tho

Aziraphale hesitated for a second before replying. He _could_ go. There was nothing stopping him. But equally... Well, it sounded rather like a night of drinking and possibly clubbing. Not really Aziraphale’s cup of tea.

Which reminded him: he rather fancied a cuppa right now.

He sent his reply, then headed to the kitchen. Sandalphon was in there, sat on the sofa and staring intently at his laptop. For the hundredth time, Aziraphale considered getting a kettle for his room.

His mobile buzzed as he reached for a mug. He shoved a teabag in at random, and grappled the phone open.

**Aziraphale:** I’m afraid that’s not really my ‘thing’, as they say. Thank you for the offer, though.

**Crowley:** No worries.

Aziraphale nodded to himself, somewhat relieved. He’d been half-expecting Crowley to try and convince him to come along anyway, and he was pleased he wouldn’t have to justify himself on this.

He looked down at the mug and belatedly realised he had no idea what kind of tea it was. No milk this time, then.

**Crowley:** What kind of things do you like to do for fun then, angel? We could celebrate joint birthdays some other way at some point. If you want.

Aziraphale smiled. The kettle whistled done.

**Aziraphale:** You mean other than holing up in my room with an entire Victoria Sponge and a good book?

**Crowley:** ngl that does sound good.

**Crowley:** But anything else?

It took a second to Google ‘ngl’ and find that it was an abbreviation for ‘not gonna lie’ – ‘gonna’ specifically, rather than ‘going to’, which Aziraphale found vaguely amusing. Modern technology was certainly advancing language in some interesting directions.

He took a moment to consider the question, finishing making the tea as he did so. What _did_ he enjoy doing? With other people, at least?

**Aziraphale:** I’m a bit boring, I’m afraid. Nothing springs to mind.

**Aziraphale:** Long walks, I suppose.

**Aziraphale:** Going to plays, of course.

**Aziraphale:** And I suppose other things of that sort. Films can be very enjoyable. As can musicals. I’ve never been to a concert, but I imagine that would be fun too.

**Crowley:** There you go, whole load of things!

**Crowley:** Any of those you fancy for your birthday?

“What are you doing?”

Aziraphale whirled around to find Sandalphon staring at him from the sofa.

“M-making tea?”

Sandalphon nodded in the direction of Aziraphale’s phone. “Who are you talking to?”

 _None of your business, that’s who._ “A friend.”

The other man’s eyes narrowed. “Is it that skeevy guy from next door?”

“W-w-wha–” Aziraphale swallowed and attempted to seem calmer than he was. “So what if it is?”

Sandalphon growled. “I don’t like him. All of them over there. They’re trouble.”

 _And you aren’t?_ But there was no chance Aziraphale would ever say anything like that aloud. He gathered up his mug and phone instead, and stuttered his way out the door. “Yes, well, ah, you see, I was just wishing him a happy birthday, since Facebook suggested it, and ah, well, must be getting on.” He practically ran down the corridor to his room.

By the time he’d put the tea down and taken a moment to breathe, there were another two messages from Crowley:

**Crowley:** Sorry, no pressure at all. Just an idea.

**Crowley:** Don’t worry if you’d rather not.

Aziraphale paused. He thought for a minute – about Sandalphon and Gabriel, about pasta and ice cream, about feeling inadequate and feeling liked.

**Aziraphale:** Do you want to meet up on campus at some point? We could get lunch together, whenever you’re next free?

The reply was near-instantaneous.

**Crowley:** Sounds wonderful angel.

Aziraphale let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. _Yes. That does sound wonderful._

* * *

In the end, he decided on cupcakes rather than one big bake. He left a few of them on the dining table with a note for the others to take one if they wanted.

His flatmates were all in the room while he was making dinner. Michael came in and saw the cakes and wished him a happy birthday. Gabriel smiled widely, fakely, and agreed with her, but didn’t say it himself. The other two remained silent, apparently engrossed by their laptops or their studies. He chose to assume they just hadn’t realised.

The next day, only one of the cupcakes had been taken. He left them there until the end of the day anyway, just in case, and then took the rest to his room. They didn’t need to know how quickly he ate them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No prizes for guessing the ‘real’ names of Crowley’s old friends (i.e. what I’m referencing), but I’d be interested to see if anyone got them all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying this fic but you can't wait until the next update, may I point you in the direction of some of my other Good Omens fanfiction?
> 
> If you like long works (especially if they're complete), I wrote ['Someone New'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20571470/chapters/48835571), a mostly Aziraphale-POV slight-AU where Aziraphale remembers Crowley before he was a demon but Crowley does not recognise Aziraphale.
> 
> If you fancy something (significantly) shorter, here's a series of little [writing prompts and challenges](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805341) from events I've participated in on the GO Events discord server.
> 
> For something fun and fluffy, ['Something So Precious'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20654492) is for you! Two groups of little old ladies separately adopt Aziraphale and Crowley, and shenanigans ensue.
> 
> If you like Hozier, there's a fic for that! A [series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1507292), even - currently at four fics and still in progress.
> 
> And finally, if you fancy some 'Awake the Snake' content (fic set at the start of July, following the Good Omens: Lockdown video), I present ['All Covered With Sleep'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25133941).
> 
> I have written a frankly ridiculous amount of words for these two, so there are other fics out there too (both complete and in-progress), but this is a selection I thought might cover just about everyone's bases. Let me know if you like any of them!


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